Most equity structured products are linked to indices, often well-known benchmarks such as the S&P 500, Eurostoxx 50 or FTSE 100.

These indices are rules based, calculated real time and, importantly, have liquid futures and options as hedging instruments and therefore they are a natural choice for most structured products providers. As such, the use of index linked structured products dominates in most markets, followed by high capitalisation stocks which would also be well-known to investors. France is the largest market for structured products linked to funds accounting for over half of all sales for products linked to