Index benchmarks across equity and bond fund categories have outperformed the majority of actively-managed funds over a five-year horizon, according to new research from Standard & Poor's (S&P).

Within Australian equities, 62.87 per cent of active managers were beaten by the S&P/ASX 200 index in the five years to year-end 2009, according to the Standard & Poor's Index Versus Active Funds (SPIVA) scorecard.

However, the results for shorter time horizons showed the majority of active funds outperformed the index.

According toS&P this was particularly true during the period of strong global equity market performance experienced during 2009.

"Active equity funds enjoyed a positive year over the course of 2009, with a very large portion of Australian equity small-cap and international equity funds outperforming their respective benchmark indices," S&P Index Services director of research and design Simon Karaban said.

"This is a positive result for active funds over the short term, however a majority of active funds still failed to beat the benchmark over a five-year period."

In Australian bonds, 89.66 per cent of active managers were beaten by the UBS Composite Bond Index in the five years to year-end 2009.

In the year to 31 December 2009, the index has outperformed only 21.13 per cent of actively-managed bond funds.

Over a three-year period that figure was 94.12 per cent, while over a one-year horizon it was 87.88 per cent.

Morningstar editorial and communications manager Phillip Gray said the active versus index manager debate was "ongoing".

"A lot depends on the universe of active managers. If you do the research at a different time, you may get a different result," he said.

This is the second SPIVA report produced by S&P for Australia, following the inaugural report produced in mid-2009. It reports the performance of actively-managed Australian managed funds, corrected for survivorship bias, and shows equal-weighted averages.