Fund manager Fidante will rule off the accounts of the Howard Mortgage Fund for the last time today, ahead of a final return of capital to unitholders. Investors will soon learn whether they will receive 100 cents in the dollar for their remaining units.Investors have already suffered some capital loss. In a notice sent out earlier this year Fidante said the sale of the remaining assets resulted in a downward revaluation of the mortgage portfolio as at the end of June. As a result, unit holdings were reduced (by way of a cancellation of units) by 2.5 per cent.The final distribution will be the proceeds of the sale of the remaining mortgage loans, together with any cash holdings, after allowing for any liabilities of the fund and termination expenses.Fidante has been making steady capital repayments since December 2012, when the decision was made to have an orderly wind-up of the fund. The amount of capital to be distributed in the final payment represents about 20 per cent of the capital value as at December 2012. In its heyday the Howard Mortgage Fund was Australia's largest mortgage trust, with assets of more than A$2 billion.Before the financial crisis the mortgage trust industry represented a $20 billion pool of capital for mortgage finance but trusts suffered heavy outflows during the GFC, as investors moved their money into guaranteed deposits.In 2010 the then manager, Challenger, outlined a restructure of the fund, saying it wanted to get the lending business going again. But the steady demand for redemptions spelled the end of the fund.The sale of assets and harvesting of cash to repay capital over the past couple of years has had an impact on returns. The fund's effective rate of return in 2013 was 0.86 per cent.Now only a handful of small fund managers remain in the mortgage trust market.