SRP hosted its virtual flagship Europe 2021 conference on 1-4 March 2021, bringing together the top voices in the structured products industry to discuss topics such as regulatory hurdles, technology and thematics as well as the roaring popularity of sustainable finance.

The awards ceremony for the event saw dominant players like Société Générale, UniCredit, Mediobanca and BNP Paribas receive multiple awards. Melania D’Angelo was awarded the Personality of the Year accolade.

Amid the ethical investing push that is sweeping across the European continent, Goldman Sachs issued its first structured product as a sustainability issuance following the launch of its inaugural vanilla sustainability benchmark bond on 12 February, for a size of US$800m.

The appeal of indexed annuities in the US has taken off with leading structured products platforms like Luma Financial Technologies jumping to expand their annuities solutions.

Luma recently onboarded Insurance Technologies as its latest partner to bring their annuities solution, “Luma Annuities,” to the market.

Luma initially grew its US footprint by establishing itself as a dominant player in the fintech industry and has since broadened its offering to extend to annuities, given their increasing popularity over the past few years.

Meanwhile, exchange-traded funds (ETF) were making waves in the Canadian market with ETF providers Purpose and Evolve making history by rolling out the world’s first crypto exchange-traded funds.  

Both ETFs will enable investors to invest directly in physically settled Bitcoin allowing investors “easy and efficient access” to the emerging asset class of cryptocurrency without the associated risk of self-custody within a digital wallet.

Brazilian investment firm XP Investimentos continues to dominate its way through the market and is launching a COE (certificate of structured operations) linked to a customised commodity global exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The structured note will launch on 15 March 2021 and will track the performance of the Solactive XP Indice de Commodities VT 15% (SOLXPCOM). The underlying is the firm’s second customised index while the first was created to track technology under the ticker SOLXPTEC

A major development in the Asia Pacific market is that UK bank HSBC raised its non-flow structured product issuance in Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan in 2020 year-on-year (YoY) as it plans to invest US$4.3 billion in Asia over the next five years.

SRP data suggests that the bank’s decision to move its structured products business from UK to Asia, announced in early 2020, is in process.

Hang Seng Indexes has launched its first hedged decrement index targeting structured product issuers in South Korea as Asian investors slowly embrace synthetic dividend underlyings.

The new HSCEI Futures KRW Hedged 3.4% Decrement Index (TR), marks the index provider’s second decrement index following the launch of HSCEI NTR KRW-converted Daily Reset 3.25% Decrement ER Index in August 2019.

In light of regulatory developments in Asian markets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is seeking to introduce the concept of ‘accredited investors (AIs)’ and has launched a consultation paper to enable a framework for the issuance of these ‘new products’, which are to be offered exclusively to AIs, in addition to participation of AIs in existing products and services.

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