It’s full steam ahead for the structured product market as September kicks off with dynamic activity across most markets.

Goldman Sachs is doubling down on its coverage of the registered investment advisor (RIA) segment in the US despite the sale of its Personal Financial Management unit and the embedding of its consumer finance platform Marcus into the unified asset and wealth management division. The US bank has appointed Adam Siegler, head of the third-party wealth business, Americas, within the global banking and markets division to lead the One Goldman Sachs Registered Investment Advisor strategy, an initiative to bring its capabilities across divisions to the US RIA market, according to an internal memo seen by SRP.

Siegler was made managing director in 2019 and took responsibility of the bank’s Private Investor Products Group (PIPG) in the Americas.

ETPs play an important role in our business strategy. The goal is to give private investors access to new markets, professional strategies and future themes and to make them tradable - Roman Przibylla, CAT Financial Products

In Asia, UK-headquartered bank Standard Chartered (SCB) is seeking to transact 90% of its trading volume through the digital platform following the launch of a new module enabling end-to-end automation for its structured notes offering and targeting Hong Kong SAR’s professional investors. This comes as the bank expands its franchise in this client segment. The new features were added to help relationship managers focus on wealth planning and reduce their administrative workload, an SCB spokesperson said, adding: “They are now able to deliver quality advice and product ideations quicker and consistently to clients.”

Alson Ho, head of wealth management for Hong Kong at SCB, highlighted that since the launch, the bank has seen a 400% year-on-year (YoY) increase in the number of tranches traded and a 600% YoY rise in profit and loss during the first quarter of 2023.

In South Korea, the balance of structured products reaching their knock-in level in South Korea reached KRW7 trillion (US$5.3 billion) in the first half of the year – all of which came from equity-linked securities (ELS) mostly tied to the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (HSCEI), according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

According to the FSS report, more than 85% of the balance, around KRW6 trillion, will be matured in the first half of next year, as the performance of HSCEI continues to weaken, the Korean financial watchdog warned. The regulator said the risk of investor loss may increase due to the fluctuations of the HSCEI and said it will continue to monitor the risk from HSCEI-tied structured products.

In the report, the regulator noted that the volatility of HSCEI, which comprises the largest and most liquid 50 Chinese securities listed in Hong Kong SAR, has spiked due to ‘the slowdown in the Chinese real estate market and deepening uncertainty in the Chinese economy’. As of 30 June, the HSCEI stood at 6,424.88 points, down 6% year-to-date.

Swiss boutique CAT Financial Products (CATFP) has listed its first exchange-traded product (ETP) on the SIX Swiss Exchange. It is entering the listed products segment after receiving authorisation from FINMA to operate as a securities firm tapping into a new target group consisting of self-directed private investors.

‘ETPs play an important role in our business strategy. The goal is to give private investors access to new markets, professional strategies and future themes and to make them tradable,' said Roman Przibylla, head public solutions, CAT Financial Products.

CATFP's ETPs are issued using SIX's Triparty Collateral Management (TCM) collateralisation solution which reduces the issuer's default risk. The pledged collateral is held in custody at SIX SIS Ltd and SIX Repo Ltd, as collateral agent; it is responsible for the daily monitoring of the collateral.

Deutsche Bank has partnered with Taurus, a Swiss-based digital asset infrastructure provider, with the aim of leveraging custody and tokenisation technology to manage cryptocurrencies, tokenised assets and digital currencies, according to Taurus’ announcement.

‘As the digital asset space is expected to encompass trillions of dollars of assets, it’s bound to be seen as one of the priorities for investors and corporations alike,’ said Paul Maley (right), global head of securities services at Deutsche Bank. ‘As such, custodians must start adapting to support their clients.’

The latest development came after Taurus’ integration to the Ethereum’s scaling platform Polygon blockchain across its custody and tokenisation platform in June in a move to allow banks, brands, and issuers to issue, book and service any tokenised assets via Polygon in a fully automated way.

Image: FreeVector.