Vontobel has scored a coup in Germany with the launch of the Swiss bank's multi issuer mein-zertifikat.de structured products platform on popular German investment portals boerse-frankfurt.de and ariva.de on April 6.
"Ariva ranks among one of the leading bank-independent financial portals in the German market, while boerse-frankfurt.de is the investor portal of Deutsche Boerse Group and offers access to real-time prices for all tradable securities," said Kristijan Tomic, head of Distribution Europe, Platform Solutions at Vontobel Europe AG, noting that "with our new partners, mein-zertifikat.de widens its scope and can reach more potential users".
"Adding them to the two issuers of investment certificates in Germany - Vontobel and HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG means that private investors have access to a broadened offering of structured products and they can compare prices of the different issuers at important points of sale," Tomic said.
Mein-zertifikat.de launched in Germany at the end of August 2016, as one of the first fintech solutions that allows advisers, asset managers and investors to create, order and then invest in individual structured products in real time. There are only two issuers on the platform, currently, with HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG joining in last November.
"With the two new issuers we expect a higher number of registered users and therewith additional turnover on mein-zertifikat.de," Tomic added. "This marks a further important step in the transformation from the existing supplier-led market to a demand-driven market for bespoke investment products in Germany.
"In the first step the offerings support the full range of services that mein-zertifikat.de offers with its fast and easy access to tailor-made structured products and price transparency provided by its multi issuers," Tomic said. "In the second step it is planned to deepen the integration into the two portals by realising new shop-in-shop ideas, integration in tools or access via single sign-on."
The new tool is a very simple way of configuring certificates that reflect individual strategies, a Deutsche Boerse spokesperson told SRP, noting that "certainly, this is going to attract a lot of attention from investors". "Investors can choose the product type, underlying, maturity date, or other features. Investors can also compare similar products from different issuers who are active on this platform."
"The functionality of the configuration tool remains the same; but investors can use boerse-frankfurt as a one-stop-shop and proceed directly to trading," the spokesperson said, adding that investors also enjoy orderly trading at the WarrantsExchange - as opposed to unregulated OTC trading. "In the future, we plan to include further offerings on this platform."
Ariva.de ranks among the leading bank-independent financial portals in the German market, and its portal users will benefit from the integration of mein-zertifikat.de as it marks a profound change in the way structured products are issued to the market, said Carsten Gern, head of sales and marketing at Ariva.de.
"The German market is overwhelmed by a vast number of structured products which are never bought by any investor, as most of them only differ minimally and do not address any one particular need," he said. "From now on our users can design their very own financial product which is tradeable on official exchanges within minutes."
Ariva.de plans to customise functionality of the platform, which initially is the same as in mein-zertifikat.de, with views upon connecting it to other services and improving connectivity between investment ideas, investment products and their current custodies, Gern added. "The journey has just started now and we believe that it will take some time to get German investors familiar with the new service on the same level as Swiss clients."
The mein-zertifikat.de platform is based on the deritrade technology, which was originally developed by Vontobel for the Swiss market. Last month Vontobel launched a new mobile app for Swiss clients that will connect investors to the Derinet online portal and the Deritrade digital marketplace, where they can design and issue, access price comparison and monitor tailor-made structured products.
Elsewhere, Vontobel has joined the Swiss Dots platform for over-the-counter (OTC) structured products, adding some 10,000 leverage products to the platform's existing range. The new leverage products will comprise warrants, knockout warrants and minifutures, as well as various underlying assets such as international and Swiss equities, currency pairs, indices and precious metals.
The move follows Vontobel's launch of a range of certificates at Euronext in France, one of the main markets for leveraged products in Europe, and a strategic agreement with Bank of Singaporethrough which clients of the Singaporean private banks will be able to book their assets in Switzerland and use Vontobel as custodian.
Related stories:
Investors in Germany lose their love of capital protection as they board the autocallable express
Actively-managed certificates are more popular than ETFs in Switzerland, Six
Vontobel makes structured product issuance mobile
Vontobel move to join Swiss Dots OTC platform adds pressure to Six Swiss Exchange's XBTR venue