The Swiss Structured Products Association (SSPA) has added SwissQuant to its ranks as a new member and partner. With this addition, the Swiss trade body continues to expand the association's membership as it aims at representing the entire market value chain and a broad industry-wide representation with issuers, markets, the buy side and partners represented in equal measure.
The SwissQuant Group, one of Switzerland's leading fintech enterprises, develops and implements software systems, analysis tools and quantitative models and technologies for the financial services industry and serves more than 150 clients. The firm offers a complete asset and portfolio optimisation solution for structured products providers with advance structuring tools such as market models & Monte Carlo simulation; short term spot & load forecasting; pricing swing options & tolling agreements; optimal dispatch for flexible assets, and dynamic & proxy hedging strategies aimed at front and mid-office teams.
Informed financial decision making require reliable analyses, accurate forecasting and a continuously adjusted set of strategy options, according to Nathaniel Zollinger (pictured), head derivatives applications at SwissQuant. "We model dynamic systems for the simulation of a broad range of comprehensive scenarios - also in supporting the SSPA's claim of further knowledge transfer," said Zollinger in a statement.
SSPA vice-president Philipp Rickenbacher said the association is now working with SwissQuant to launch a tailor-made app which "will help understand how structured products work in customer portfolios and systematically explain the advantages of mixing in these products".
The new app, created in a joint effort of SSPA and SwissQuant, is designed to support the interests of the entire industry "even more effectively", said Rickenbacher.
The SSPA's objective is the development of an application which helps investors to better understand the risk return patterns of structured products in a portfolio context as well as to perceive market risks and to show the benefits of strategic usage of structured products, according to Peter Keller, head of operations & standards at the SSPA. "The app will also help to enhance the transparency of risks and the key benefits of structured products," said Keller. "The application includes various risk measures, stress- and opportunity tests, visualization of back tests and return bandwidth."
The SwissQuant group was founded in 2005 as a spin-off company of the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), and comprises a dozen international teams of mathematicians, quant engineers and quant developers.
The addition of SwissQuant is the fifth to the SSPA year to date, and follows that of Aargauische Kantonalbank (AKB), Cornèr Bank, Lombard Odier, and Natixis. The Swiss trade body has also been busy implementing new initiatives such as the launch of quarterly supplementary market statistics which include listed and non-listed structured products marketed by SSPA members including Barclays, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Julius Baer, Leonteq, Notenstein La Roche, UBS, Vontobel and Zurich Cantonal Bank.
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