Bank of Ireland Asset Management has taken lots of flak in the pensions market for the performance of its funds, and is paying a dear price for its decision many moons ago to go short on Irish equities and into cash.

That decision - just before the Irish market turned into a roaring bell and interest rates fell - has resulted in BIAM plunging to bottom of the pecking order, an unaccustomed position for an institution that used to pride itself for always being close to top of the heap.

The problem for BIAM's fund managers in the past couple of years has been that they have been fighting to get back into the equity market as prices soared. Paying up for the appropriate weighting of Irish equities - essential when Irish-pound liabilities need to be balanced with Irish-pound assets - has sent BIAM's fund performance from bad to worse.

The end-July fund-performance figures from Irish Pensions Trust show BIAM in bottom place over the past year, but also close to bottom in the key five-year period usually used by trustees when comparing the performance of their pension fund managers. A 17.3 per cent annual return over the past five years might seem reasonable - but not when the market average was 18.4 per cent and when top performer Eagle Star turned in 22.4 per cent.

People putting their money into AVC schemes usually like to keep track of the fund manager's short-term performance, and here BIAM's seven-month figures and one-year figures make grim reading. In the seven months to the end of July, BIAM generated a 13.2 per cent return - well below the 18.8 per cent average, and almost 10 percentage points below top-performing Montgomery Oppenheim and 1.6 percentage points lower than the second-worst performer, ESB Fund Managers.

Over the year, BIAM's 18.4 per cent return compares with the 24.7 per cent average and the 30.1 per cent return from Monty's.