The two companies have entered into a new cooperation agreement for the manufacturing and distribution of structured products.
Swissquote has partnered with Leonteq for the issuance and distribution of structured products with an initial focus on yield enhancement payoffs.
Swissquote will join Leonteq’s technology platform as a white-label issuer to expand its capabilities to create and distribute structured products.
Becoming an issuer of structured products is another milestone in our history - Marc Bürki, Swissquote
As part of the cooperation, Leonteq will provide a range of services including structuring, pricing and hedging as well as product documentation, market-making and lifecycle management.
‘Becoming an issuer of structured products is another milestone in our history and will further raise our profile amongst private and institutional clients,’ said Marc Bürki (pictured), CEO of Swissquote.
Under the agreement, Swissquote will be responsible for the distribution of its structured products to its own clients and will have access to a new set of qualified investors through Leonteq’s international distribution network. Swissquote will also become an issuer on LynQs, Leonteq’s issuance platform for structured investment solutions – the first products issued by Swissquote went live today (18 January).
This new partnership between Leonteq and Swissquote is an extension of their existing collaboration in actively managed certificates (AMCs).
Since 2018, Leonteq has issued more than 30 tracker certificates on theme-based indices sponsored by Swissquote which have attracted notable investor demand with traded volumes totalling approximately CHF450m (US$491m) in 2021.
These tracker certificates have included investment strategies on cryptocurrencies as well as a range of sustainability-focused certificates, including the tracker certificate on the Swissquote Rainbow Rights Index.
The Swiss bank had a busy end of 2021 after licensing the Swissquote Metaverse index for a Leonteq tracker certificate listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and two other Leonteq trackers linked to the Swissquote Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Cypto Basket and Swissquote Smart Contract Platforms Crypto Basket.
AMC offering
Swissquote built up its partnership with Leonteq on AMCs throughout 2021 to bring to market a number of AMC strategies via trackers such as the first ever inverse AMC - the Swissquote Global Inverse Index, a strategy constructed with derivatives from inverse ETFs to profit from a fall in the value of an underlying benchmark - using the MSCI World as a benchmark - and wrapped in an AMC with Leonteq as the issuer.
Later in the year, the Swiss bank launched the Swissquote Recovery Index which offers exposure to industries positioned to benefit from the reduction of Covid-19 risk; the Pharma Opportunity AMC focused on companies leading the search for a Covid vaccine; as well as the Swissquote Blockchain Index and the Swissquote Multi Crypto Active 2.0 index, two second generation DeFi and crypto gauges delivered also via AMCs underlying tracker certificates.
Before its partnership with Leonteq, Swissquote pioneered several new strategies around key investment themes such as the #DE30 Social Sentiment Index, a benchmark that summarises and evaluates the opinions expressed on social media regarding the German Dax via an algorithm powered by artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the Swissquote Cannabis Portfolio and Swissquote Bitcoin Active Index.
In October 2021, the Swiss Structured Products Association added Swissquote Bank as a new buy-side member. The bank is an active retail broker for warrants and structured products that can be traded via various stock exchanges as well as via its proprietary platform SwissDOTS launched in 2012 which prices products from UBS, Goldman Sachs, Vontobel, BNP Paribas and Société Générale.