At the heart of the complaints, filed with the SEC in January, is the contention that Hartford is not making a like-for-like change to its funds.

In fact, the change may leave Hartford’s legacy variable annuity customers worse off, says Steve Joyce, senior vice president of The Capital Group and a former Hartford executive.

“They’re replacing low-expense, fundamentally active funds for high-expense, quantitatively managed funds,” Joyce says. “To charge active fundamental management fees for quantitative funds is just wrong … and consumers want choices more than they want simplification -- the average of the top 10 variable annuities today has 102 fund choices.”

American Funds says that if Hartford is successful, the average Leaders variable annuity contract will have a total of 20 investment options to choose from.

American Funds and Raymond James support adding the new, lower-priced investment options, but not reducing the selection of funds available to clients. After the new Hartford funds have an ample track record for comparison, a decision could be made whether to trim down the investing options.

At Raymond James, Stolz doubts whether Hartford could make a like-for-like replacement while reducing the number of funds.

"They're taking 17 different sub accounts that could be growth or growth-and-income oriented and collapsing them into one growth-and-income subaccount," Stolz says. "We find it difficult to believe that 17 different funds, all of which have some different objectives, could be made equivalent to one fund."

Sturdevant maintained that the Hartford still offers a broad selection across its variable annuity business and would continue to do so after the proposed changes: over 200 funds from 31 investment managers representing 33 different investment styles.

“Annuity customers will continue to have access to the same asset classes and a comparable variety of funds that include a spectrum of risk and return profiles,” said Sturdevant.

The Hartford Leaders variable annuity products used access to “leading” managers as part of its value proposition, says Downer.

Since Hartford stopped offering new contracts in 2012, the company has engaged in continuous efforts to get the $42 billion it holds in variable annuity contracts off of its books.