Companies seeking comprehensive information on the structured retail product market can now access a new, independent, on-line service designed to report on the UK market.
www.StructuredRetailProducts.com provides a database of over 1,100 individual products from more than 100 companies, dating back to 1997 and representing sales of over £20bn. Companies who wish to subscribe can apply for registration on-line or by e-mailing Register@StructuredRetailProducts.com
This is the first comprehensive and completely independent resource for companies wishing to collect unbiased competitor information and research and analyse the market. Subscribers can use the database to search for specific product types, issuers, wrappers or indices. In addition the service allows users to generate reports on the size and scope of the market overall, broken down by product type, and crucially providing details on overall sales volumes.
The site provides continually updated details on current offerings, many with downloadable brochures, as well as forthcoming product maturity dates - all information that is not available elsewhere in the industry. To ensure completeness product providers can submit new products to the database on-line and edit their existing product details. The website also has a news section including market reviews and articles by market experts.
www.StructuredRetailProducts.com is targeted primarily at investment banks and product providers and has already attracted a large group of subscribers including Barclays, RBS, HSBC, UBS, Keydata, NDF and Bradford & Bingley.
Analysis of the structured retail products market in 2002 from www.StructuredRetailProducts.com shows that the market grew by 15% from 2001 with gross sales volumes increasing from £5.47bn in 2001 to £6.27bn in 2002. There were 68 product providers who launched 312 products compared with 62 providers launching 255 products in 2001. A notable trend in the market was the decrease in sales of high income, capital at risk products by 20% from £2.41bn to £1.93bn and the increase in sales of capital protected products by over 40% from £3.06bn to £4.35bn.
Robert Benson of Arete Consulting, the company that owns www.StructuredRetailProducts.com commented:
""Structured retail products now represent a significant segment of the retail savings and investment market. Up until now however comprehensive data on the size and scope of the market has been difficult to obtain. We believe that there is demand in the structured retail product market for independent, comprehensive and timely information about all the products that are available.
We hope that the website will help to provide a clearer picture of the market and so be a useful resource for all participants. We are delighted that we have already received such an enthusiastic response and expect to continue to sign up more subscribers over the coming weeks.""
For further information please contact:
Robert Benson 020 8348 4224 / 07785 250964
Robert@StructuredRetailProducts.com
Laurie Fulton 01962 622813 / 07900 813257
Laurie@StructuredRetailProducts.com
Jennie Campbell / Simone Fassom 020 7655 0500
Polhill Communications
Note for editors
The Structured Retail Products Database is owned and maintained by Arete Consulting Limited, www.arete-consulting.com , a specialist consultancy that advises large financial services companies on all aspects of derivative products (primarily business strategy, new product development and training).
The data has been collected over many years from a wide variety of sources and is continually updated. Arete Consulting is an independent company and makes no comment or opinion on specific products.
The database currently contains details of over 1,100 product offerings dating from 1997. No claim is made as to the completeness or accuracy of the data but it is believed to be the most comprehensive source of such information currently available.
Arete Consulting was set up in 2001 by Robert Benson PhD. Prior to setting up Arete Consulting he worked for 13 years at HSBC in a variety of derivatives roles across the foreign exchange, equity and interest rate markets, culminating in global responsibility for the Group\'s foreign exchange derivatives and retail equity derivatives businesses. Dr Benson is widely regarded as one of the driving forces behind the development of the retail equity derivatives market in the UK and was voted one of the leading players in the derivatives markets in both 1993 and 1994 by industry participants in the Global Finance magazine awards.
Laurie Fulton, business development consultant at Arete Consulting, has extensive experience of the life and pension business having spent over 25 years at Winterthur Life running pension portfolios and latterly in product development including fixed term derivative based pension investments for SIPP and income drawdown investors and highly successful income and growth bonds. Laurie also worked on the development of a European pensions administration platform for Winterthur in Europe and liased with investment banks, including CSFB, on building retail derivative based investments. In 2001 he worked with Keydata to develop institutional business and since January 2002 has been working as a consultant on structured retail products.