Latest: BNPP doubles down on Exane, platforms expand their reach

The French bank is seeking to ‘further strengthen and widen the range of cash equity and derivatives services’ it offers to institutional investors and corporates globally, and leverage the acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s Global Prime Finance and Electronic Equities business in 2019 to position the bank as a leading provider in global equities.

Exane is a small player in the public offering space and has just over 275 live products worth an estimated US$364m across markets including Italy (254 products/US$292m) and Ireland (16 products/US$53m). There are also four live products issued by Exane on SRP’s institutional database.

BNP Paribas has not disclosed the terms of the acquisition or if Exane will be integrated into the bank’s equities division as there is an overlapping of functions and management across prime services, global electronic trading, equity derivatives and equity capital markets.

Alessandro Ricci, Exane Derivative’s former head of structured products and co-head of derivatives alongside Mathieu Bernard, who is also head of equity derivatives flow business since 2017, joined Leonteq in mid-2020.

Delta Capita rolls out ‘due diligence’ platform in US, Asia

Delta Capita has launched its distributor due diligence platform, inSPire Due Diligence in the Americas and Asia Pacific to complement the existing service across Europe.

For too long, the industry has grappled with slow distributor onboarding processes and inefficient due diligence duplication

With the expansion, structured products issuers can engage with new distributors who are based in any of the main financial centres across the globe and benefit from the same, peer reviewed inSPire Due Diligence Questionnaires (DDQ) for new distributor relationships, according to Mark Aldous (pictured), CEO of Structured Products at Delta Capita.

‘For too long, the industry has grappled with slow distributor onboarding processes and inefficient due diligence duplication,’ he said. ‘InSPire Due Diligence transforms this process and reduces the overhead for everyone involved whilst ensuring consistent cross-regional standards.’

Delta Capita’s services cover distributor screening, DDQ production and remediation as well as support across the full client onboarding process, including a centralised outreach for KYC documentation, KYD documentation and distribution agreements.

Inspire Due Diligence centralises and standardises ‘Know Your Distributor’ Due Diligence for structured product issuers and distributors. So far, issuers’ have requested inSPire’s standardised Due Diligence Questionnaire on over 500 distributors globally, covering distribution in 75+ countries, according to Aldous.

Luma Swiss expansion set in motion

The Swiss Structured Products Association (SSPA) has added Luma Financial Technologies as partner member. The association’s membership base includes now 43 members across the entire structured products value creation chain.

Luma Financial Technologies most recently opened an office in Zurich to offer more asset managers and private banks access to its platform. The membership of the SSPA is a further step towards the full establishment of Luma Financial Technologies in the largest market for structured products in the world, according to David Wood, managing director of Luma Financial Technologies.

‘It is our ambition to help support the Swiss industry of structured products with our platform and international expertise and to promote the industry as a whole as part of our expansion into Europe,’ said Wood, who joined the US platform earlier this year to spearhead the firm’s European expansion.

Wood is seeking to replicate the work Luma has been done in the US with private banks and wealth management clients to build out new services and operational capabilities - distribution processes, compliance functions, and integrate them into the infrastructures of those banks.

Luma will follow the same strategy it has developed in the US and Latam by offering the platform’s capabilities to private banks and wealth managers in Europe. 

Leverage Shares adds fintech disruptors and 3X Tesla to suite of S&L ETPs

Leverage Shares, the UK’s pioneer in short and leverage (S&L) ETPs initially focused on US single stocks, has expanded its range to 65 ETPs.

The ETP specialist provider has added new stocks to its pool with fintech shares such as Square and PayPal, UK blue chips that include Barclays and BP, and additional leverage factors to its flagship Tesla ETPs.

Since expanding their physically-backed offerings in 2020, average turnover in Leverage Shares ETPs has increased sevenfold. The boom in global investing in single stocks has spilled over to S&L ETPs as investors seek out risk-mitigated access to leverage, according to Oktay Kavrak, product strategy at Leverage Shares.

‘Our investors have expressed not only their appetite for convenient leverage to more of their favourite stocks, but also their preference for a cost-efficient wrapper. We have the lowest expense ratio of any S&L ETP issuer on single stocks,’ he said.

With the new additions, the firm now offers exposure to sectors such as banks, energy, aviation, telecoms and others. ETP holders incur no margin calls and can trade the products in GBP, USD and EUR.

Simon adds structured ETFs to platform

Simon Markets has expanded the suite of ETF offerings available on its structured products platform with the addition of First Trust’s Target Outcome ETFs, the second largest provider of actively managed funds in the US.

The firm reported recently that its target outcome ETFs have grown to over US$1.6 billion, as of the end of last year. The company is also an active distributor of structured products in the US market with more than 5,420 live products worth US$7.9 billion.

First Trust is initially offering on Simon’s ETF Marketplace buffered ETFs tied to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust as well as the FT Cboe Vest Growth-100 Buffer ETF, based on the Invesco QQQ Trust℠, Series 1 (QQQ), and FT Cboe Vest International Equity Buffer ETF, based on the iShares MSCI EAFE ETF which were launched in September, ‘with additional offerings in the pipeline’.

The US platform has been actively expanding its reach in the US annuities markets over the last 18 months most recently with the addition of Global Atlantic Financial Group, as well as Great American Life National, Raymond James Financial, and multi-carrier sales offering, Insurance Technologies FireLight.