THE following table is a sample of just a few of the unit linked savings plans on the market, including the new Ark Life PIP. The monthly (as opposed to indexed) contribution is £83.33 amount (£1,000 annually). We asked the companies concerned for values after three, five and 10 years using the allowable Insurance Federation growth assumptions of 7 and 9 per cent.

With the exception of Ark Life and Equitable Life, the returns from the conventional initial commission contracts are very similar over the three year period, with more significant variations emerging over the longer term. What is very interesting and confirms the views of a number of life assurance spokesmen is that the Ark Life PIP does not produce significantly higher values in the longer term, mainly because of the impact of its relatively high annual charge of 1.5 per cent.

Ark Life claims that Equitable Life's overall higher figures are "irrelevant" given that it has only sold a handful of unit linked savings products "as few as three in 1994 according to IIF sales statistics". Nevertheless, the no commission, low annual charge (i.e. 0.5 per cent) pricing structure of the Equitable Life will inevitably result in better values using the exact same growth assumptions.