Unit trusts have come a long way from their roots as a way for the public to make regular savings into a diversified portfolio of shares. In fact, in the first quarter of this year equity funds attracted just R104m.

The general equity sector, which for the first 20 years was the only kind of unit trust available, is now just 13% of the industry.

The specialist sectors (excluding property), which were so dominant on the landscape 10 years ago, now barely feature. The small cap sector does not even make up 1% of industry assets, neither do industrial or financial funds.

And some of the traditional fixed interest sectors have also dwindled away. Bond funds account for just 2% of assets, as do income funds, which were once considered the best parking bay for hard times.

The big flows went into money market funds, which had net inflows of R14,4bn.

Investing in the money market is very similar to keeping money in the bank, unless the bank which takes the deposit gets into financial trouble, you will not lose money in one of these funds. In fact, they are safer than bank deposits as no more than 20% of the fund can be deposited into any single bank.

These funds now account for 37% of the assets of all domestic unit trusts. The proportion invested in equity funds is now just 20%.

Tienie van der Mescht, head of Sanlam Collective Investments, says that much of the flow going into money funds comes from corporates looking for a better yield and not the traditional retail investor.

In fact the R500/month debit order client - though quite large in number in the old established management companies such as Stanlib, Old Mutual and Sanlam - accounts for a negligible proportion of industry assets, perhaps as low as 3%.

They barely feature in some of the new generation management companies, which have built substantial asset bases without the benefit of a tied agency force. Allan Gray, with R80,3bn under management, is now second only to Stanlib with R91,5bn (and Allan Gray would be comfortably first if money market funds are excluded).

Old Mutual, which was the market leader for 30 years, is now behind Allan Gray and Investec in market share of long-term funds.

Allan Gray's success is particularly impressive as it is based on three "category killer" unit trusts - the Stable Fund, which has 80% of the assets in the low equity balanced category; the Balanced Fund, which is 46% of the variable equity category; and Allan Gray Equity Fund, with a 12% share of the general equity category. Well-established funds such as Old Mutual Investors and Stanlib Equity (the old Guardbank Growth Fund) have only a fraction of those assets.

There is a strong element of "safety in numbers" when it comes to choosing unit trusts. And this has increased over the past five years since the Financial Advisory & Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act, which requires brokers to provide appropriate advice in line with the financial needs of their clients.

"I believe that the advisers have become too conservative to avoid potential liability," says Prudential unit trusts MD John Kinsley.

There are now 891 funds in the industry, but it is dominated by about 20 funds. Other than the three Allan Gray funds, the giants include the Nedgroup Rainmaker Fund with R7,5bn. But the real whoppers are Absa Money Market (R55,5bn), Standard Bank Money Market (R35,1bn) and Prudential Money Market (R33,4bn).

Sadly, money market funds provide suboptimal returns over the long term. The real winners on a five-year view have been the property funds. This has been an increasingly popular sector as it combines the growth potential of equities with the interest bearing aspects of bonds and cash. It was, with hindsight, an extremely underrated sector five years ago and considered to be inferior to the portfolios that the life offices held directly. The explosion in property funds of funds - which now outnumber listed property shares - had a direct influence on the rating of property shares. There is now R17,6bn in these funds, and they own 20% of the property sector.

Over five years, the top three funds are all property funds - Stanlib Property Income (with a total return of 213,9%), Stanlib Multimanager Property (203,9%) and Old Mutual SA Quoted Property (191,7%).

The best general equity fund over that time has been Prudential Equity (185,8%) and its stablemate Dividend Maximiser is not far behind, with a return of 181,4%. Yet many advisers remain preoccupied with the short-term and these funds have received only R300m of net flows this year.

If you scan the list of the Top 25 funds over a year, there are no equity funds. This demonstrates the importance of building up a balanced portfolio of growth assets - property has still done well in the short term. The top fund over one year is a newcomer, the Discovery Flexible Property Fund, followed by the veteran Stanlib Property Income Fund. The best nonproperty funds were the RMB Bond and Nedgroup Bond (run by Prescient).

Ten years ago it was widely predicted that the foreign funds would account for a higher and higher share of the market, as investors looked for a pure rand hedge. Yet foreign and worldwide funds account for just 5% of industry assets, down from 7% over the past year. The only sizeable funds in the sector are two Allan Gray-Orbis funds (R5,3bn and R2,4bn), Investec Africa (R1,5bn - though this is almost entirely institutional), Investec World Wide (R1,4bn) and Old Mutual Global Equity (R1,2bn).

The biggest sectors in the industry are the money market (R228bn), general equity (R79,5bn), varied specialist fixed interest (R99,8bn), variable equity funds (R50,4bn) and targeted return funds (R31,1bn).