Absa adds third party distribution in South Africa

Absa Capital, the corporate and investment banking division of Barclays Africa Group, a subsidiary of Barclays in South Africa (SA), has hired Johann Gunter as head of external distribution.

Gunter, who joins Absa on 19 January, will be based in Johannesburg and report to Ryan Sydow, head of retail distribution at Absa Capital. “Johann has been running IFA distribution at BNP Paribas for the a few years and knows the South African market well,” said Sydow. “With the RDR coming to South Africa, we want to ensure we have the right balance in our distribution mix and Johann will lead our efforts into the third party (non Absa) IFA space.”

Sydow said that Gunter’s appointment is part of a wider expansion as the bank taps into other wrappers, such as structured funds. “We have plans to add two, maybe three more to the team this year as we expand our solutions capabilities,” he said. “Unit Trust (mutual funds) is an established delivery mechanism in South Africa and we want to be an active player in the country’s fund platforms. ETPs are not yet at the level they are in the more developed countries but while that is changing slowly in South Africa we need to keep busy and we can leverage our structuring capabilities to offer CPPI structures and other risk targeted fund linked structures that will facilitate our access to fund platforms.”

Gunter joins from BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities, where he has been responsible for the marketing and sales of retail structured products in South Africa since July 2013. Prior to that, he spent two years as a product specialist at Renaissance Asset Managers with responsibility for distribution in Africa and Southeast Asia. Gunter started his career in the wealth management division of Appleton, initially as investment consultant to high-net worth private clients but later moved across to broker consulting.

Absa Capital has been increasing its intermediary structured products since the end of 2013 when it linked up with iTransact the leading structured product platform in South Africa and others like Momentum Wealth Platform (MWP) to make its structured commodity and equity investment products accessible to all the country’s independent advisers and investors.

In addition, Absa Capital has been involved in finalising plans to roll out Barclays’ structured products business in a number of African markets, including Mauritius, Ghana and Kenya. Barclays was granted regulatory approval in December 2013 to provide index-linked deposits by the Bank of Mauritius and from the Stock Exchange of Mauritius for a secondary listing of its structured note (EMTN) programme.

Absa Capital brought 23 tranche-based growth structures to market in 2014 including 17 uncapped calls, six autocall protected trackers, and one autocall enhance tracker, which sold an estimated $34m, according to SRP data. Most of the products issued by Absa in 2014 featured the Eurostoxx50 index (12 products), followed by the FTSE100, the Barclays Black Chips Price Return USD Index, the Barclays Multi Asset Sharpe Risk Weighted RC 5% USD (four products), and the FTSE/JSE Africa Top 40 Index (two products). Absa’s first foray into non ZAR based issuances using Barclays Bank as issuer took place in December 2014 and will continue as part of the range.