With a new tracker bond product coming out virtually every week, the launch of Tracker Bond Information Service, from National Deposit Brokers, (NDB), may go some way to help investors understand the ins and outs of tracker bonds and which one best suits their needs.

There are nine active tracker bonds on the market, ranging from offers of fully guaranteed capital returns to those with only partial guarantees. They are tracking a wide range of indices and time frames. With minimum investment sums of between £2,000£5,000 all of them are pitched to include low-sum investors.

What has not been available to date has been an easy to access, ongoing register of these bonds, which lists their main features, dropping one bond as its issue date expires and replacing it with the next one that comes on stream.

"A booklet, A Consumer's Guide To Tracker Bonds, will give people information about how trackers work and the full list of the bonds," says Mr Douglas Farrell, NDB director, who is heading up the new service. "The idea is that people can go off and read it all and then come back to us if they want our view of the market. We also have a freephone number for people to use.

"We have produced two trackers ourselves in the past, so we know in our own minds which ones offer better value than others," says Mr Farrell.

"We know how they are structured, how they are priced and we can weigh up the pros and cons and give people our view about what we believe is the best product on the market at any given time, and depending on the client's circumstances."

Like its sister company, NDB, the new company is rewarded in the form of a finder's fee, in this case 3.5 per cent of the size of the investment. The fee is paid by the institution and is not deducted from the client's fund, but is built into the overall pricing of the product. According to Mr Farrell, this is the standard fee paid to all brokers who pass on tracker bond business to the issuing institution.

While this service will provide an objective view of the range of trackers on the market, readers should keep in mind that it will not provide a wider picture of other investment options - you should consult an independent, preferably fee-based adviser if you need wider financial planning.

Certainly, the pricing issue and how these derivative options are purchased by the fund manager is important and critics of the latest batch of trackers say longer averaging periods (the months designated at the end of the investment period in which growth returns are averaged out in order to avoid sudden drops in the markets) and exposure to certain "cheaper" indices, like Japan, which is performing badly, are affecting the price at which the fund managers can buy into them. The cheaper the pricing, the more profit for the issuer, but not necessarily for the investor.

Irish Permanent's latest tracker bond, out this week, has joined the Tracker Bond Information Service list. The sixth issue of Balanced Equity Bond series, this tracker offers two investment terms - five year and six months or three years and nine months and requires a minimum £3,000 capital investment. Like the most recent New Irish tracker, this one is also linked to a basket of indices that includes the Nikkei 300, the Dutch AEX, the Swiss SMI and the French CAC, but it guarantees the full 100 per cent capital investment.

There are two investment options available - the first places 50 per cent of your capital in a fixed-rate deposit account earning 36 per cent interest gross over the period and the other 50 per cent to track the growth of the basket of indices. Option two simply changes the deposit/investment ratio to 25/70 per cent with an interest rate return of 18 per cent gross. The bonds have the potential to earn up to 100 per cent of the performance of the indices, though potential investors should note that the averaging period is 18 months.

The closing date for investing in this bond is December 12th. The freephone number for Tracker Bond Information Services is 1800 322 422.