Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, said Wednesday it will give investors the chance to exit a controversial investment fund that bets on the life expectations of a certain group of people in the United States.

"Given the recent public debate over the justification of such a product, Deutsche Bank is giving investors the chance to pull out of their investment prematurely," the bank said in a statement.

Investors would be sent a written repurchase offer shortly, where they would be able to receive their invested capital minus any payouts made in the interim, the statement said.

The synthetic fund, entitled Kompass Life 3, was set up in 2007 and its payouts are tied to the life expectations of a reference group of 500 US citizens. The earlier the date of their demise, the higher the return.

Kompass Life 3 has attracted 10,000 small investors in Germany and currently has invested funds of around 200 million euros ($265 million).

However, one such investor filed a complaint, claiming they were not informed at the time about exactly how the fund functioned.

In response, the ombudsman of the German banking federation acknowledged that the product was "difficult to reconcile with our values, particularly in the area of the inviolability of human dignity," according to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel earlier this month.

Nevertheless, financial sources told AFP that the complaints from investors were not based on moral objections to the fund, but because the return of around 3.0 percent each year between 2009 and 2011 was not high enough.

Deutsche Bank previously operated similar funds based on buying up insurance policies from a group of US citizens in return for a payment.

Investors in the fund were then betting on how much return they would get as the insurance policies paid out.

Kompass Life 3 was based on a specific group of 500 US citizens whose life expectancy was determined by medical experts, with the payouts falling the longer they lived past the forecasts, and did not involve the purchase of their insurance policies.