The pension plan-wrapper season has officially been launched in the Spanish structured retail arena with the arrival of three new structured retail pension-wrapped products.
It is a tradition in the Spanish market that investment and savings providers use the last quarter of every year to hedge and market their pension plans throughout their commercial retail networks, including the increasingly popular structured capital-guaranteed pension plans. According to Inverco, the Spanish Association of Collective Investment Institutions & Pension Funds, there are more than 200 live capital-guaranteed pension plans in the Spanish country with a sales volume of €8.1bn, including fixed income capital-guaranteed pension funds and equity-based structured capital-guaranteed pension plans.
Spanish structured retail giant Santander is the most prominent of the providers, implementing its end-of-year campaign with the launch of a seven-year savings plan linked to the DJEurostoxx50. The new Santander Garantizado Eurostoxx2 is a 100% capital-guaranteed growth product with an uncapped call payoff. The product guarantees the return of invested capital at maturity, plus 70% participation in the highest average performance of the underlying or the highest multiple of four reached by the average index performance during the life of the product. Santander Garantizado Eurostoxx2 will be available to retail investors until 2 February next year with a minimum investment of €600.
The other two pension-wrapped products come from Catalan saving banks Caixa Catalunya and Caixa Tarragona. Ascat Vida, Caixa Catalunya’s pension fund manager, has just started promoting Plan de Pensiones Crecimiento 20/100. This product is an eight-year investment based on a straight uncapped Asian call on the domestic Ibex35 index. Caixa Catalunya’s Plan de Pensiones Crecimiento 20/100 guarantees at maturity the original investment plus the highest value of a 20% annualised coupon and 100% participation in the average index growth over the investment period. Plan de Pensiones Crecimiento 20/100 will be available to retail customers until 31 December; minimum investment is €1,000.
Caixa Tarragona has launched Caixa Tarragona Plus 2013, a six-year growth plan linked to the performance of a basket of indices comprising the DJEurostoxx50 and DJEurostoxx30 SD. This product also guarantees 100% capital return at maturity plus 50% participation in the difference between the performance of the two indices during the term. Caixa Tarragona Plus 2013 will be marketed among retail investors until 31 December; the minimum investment is €1,500.
These products are available now in Recent Additions (Spain).
