SRP in brief: plan of action

Custom and strategy indices have become an increasingly important part of HSBC’s structured products offering, according to Joel Abrahams, director, structured products sales.

These indices are now considered flagship products and are central to HSBC’s current structured product offerings - Joel Abrahams, HSBC

During the past eight months, HSBC has launched new custom and strategy indices for both principal protected products, such as certificates of deposit, and principal-at-risk products, to address specific client requirements.

“These indices are now considered flagship products and are central to HSBC’s current structured product offerings,” Abrahams said.

Over at RBC Capital Markets, the company’s suite of strategies across asset classes, factors, indicators and methodologies continues to grow and evolve.

“We see a broadening range of distributor and wealth advisory clients utilising [custom & strategy indices] through principal-protected, leveraged or income-generating structured products to achieve more customized investment outcomes,” said Geoffroy Samarcq, the bank’s head of multi-asset QIS structuring.  

Meanwhile, at Salt Financial, the focus is on risk control indices, particularly for annuities and structured products, according to the company’s founder and COO Alfred Eskander.

“We partner with investment banks, distributors and insurance companies and have won over 32 mandates in the financial index space so far,” he said.

Sales of registered indexed linked annuity (Rila) products set a quarterly and mid-year record in the US. Rila sales were US$19.1 billion in Q2 2025, 15% higher than the prior year period, according to Limra’s U.S. Individual Annuity Sales Survey, which represents 92% of the total US annuity market.

In the first half of 2025, Rila sales jumped to US$36.7 billion, up 18% YoY.

Another Limra survey, focused on retail life insurance sales, stated that index universal life (IUL) sales remain a driving force in the US life insurance market with new IUL premium increasing by 31% to US$1.2 billion, with a four percent increase in policy count during Q2.

In people news, SRP reported that Thibault Dufour has joined BMO Capital Markets in New York as managing director, head of QIS trading. In this new role, Dufour reports to Simon Torjmane, head of US structured equity trading, and Lucas Caliri, global head of structured equity trading in Toronto.

Patrick Oberhaensli, CEO and founder of Evolids Finance analysed how the risk profile of structured products changes when barrier options are triggered and how monitoring the Greeks can help identifying opportunities and relevant market signals for the issuance of structured products.

In another analysis, FVC’s Suzi Hampson compared products linked to the Morgan Stanley MAP Trend index and those linked to the Barclays Trailblazer Index, which are both popular in US structured products markets and are designed to use portfolio allocation to maximise returns for a given risk profile.

Our philosophy has always been to make the fund as transparent and as accessible as possible - Vincent Bonnard, Finanzlab

In Switzerland, Finanzlab announced its Finanzlab Multi Index Fund is now available for trading on BX Swiss.

The Swiss open-ended fund, which aims to provide an efficient investment in a diversified portfolio of barrier reverse convertible (BRC) products linked to equity indices of the major developed countries, is listed on the exchange’s newly launched ‘sponsored qualified investor funds’ segment, with Julius Baer acting as market maker.

“Our philosophy has always been to make the fund as transparent and as accessible as possible,” Vincent Bonnard, founding partner at Finanzlab told SRP.

An estimated US$675m was collected from 197 publicly offered structured products that struck during Q2 2025 in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) markets covered by SRP (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia).

Sales volumes increased by 12% compared to the previous quarter; year-on-year (YoY) they fell by two percent, according to SRP data.

In South Korea, sales of structured products reached KRW6.35 trillion (US$4.57 billion) in August – up 54%YoY – with principal-protected autocallables wrapped as equity-linked bonds gaining traction in the country’s retail market.

The Korean market is awaiting a regulatory update regarding the resumption of sales of equity-linked securities (ELS) to retail investors, however, multiple sources familiar with the matter told SRP that the restart may be delayed towards the end of the year.

Also in Asia, DBS Bank announced the launch of its online equity-linked investment (ELI) and currency-linked investment (CLI) service in Hong Kong SAR, allowing investors to trade these offerings on its HK banking app and e-banking.

This week, SRP also reported on the SIX Swiss Exchange setting a record for new listings; the expansion of the dual directional buffer ETF range by Innovator; and the launch of analytics for the options market by CME Group.

_{Image: Flamingo Images/Adobe Stock.}

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