MLC Investment Management (MLC IM) has reduced the number of managers for its MLC Australian Share Fund from eight to three.

The new line-up includes MLC Group company Antares Capital Partners, which has been allocated 45 per cent or about $630 million of the portfolio.

Bennelong Australian Equity Partners was allocated 20 per cent or about $280 million of the portfolio, while MLC retained JCP Investment Partners, which now manages 35 per cent or about $490 million of the portfolio.

MLC IM has removed six active managers from the MLC Australian Share Fund, including Balanced Equity Management, Dimensional, Maple-Brown Abbott Investment Managers, Northcape, Wallara Asset Management and Northward Capital.

It also terminated a passive mandate with Vanguard Investments, which MLC IM had indicated in February was a temporary allocation.

"We put a piece of passive in the strategy earlier in the year, and we also terminated Concord at that time, and we had done that as a function of what we saw as a reduction in style difference among managers, dealing with some performance inconsistencies there as well," MLC IM Australian equities portfolio manager Peter Sumner told Investor Weekly.

"We also said that when we would find a suitable manager the portfolio would then revert back to an active manager, and so we believe that now is the appropriate time to do that."

Sumner said the consolidation of the number of managers in the portfolio to three was also the result of overlapping investment ideas.

"Managers have congregated in some of the similar themes and risks that are present in the market," he said.

"So in terms of getting diversification within the portfolio, we found that there were some style and alpha redundancies in there."

The changes affect only the $1.4-billion MLC Wholesale Australian Equity Fund and not the Horizon series.

MLC IM will also change the benchmark of the fund from the S&P/ASX 300 Accumulation Index to the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index as of 31 August.

"It reflects what has occurred in the strategy," Sumner said.

"We are basically saying: 'We are not really playing in the really small-cap space.'"