The purpose of this article is to break down the essential elements of structured products - including how they are built, how investors use them and most importantly the risks that come with them - in a way that's easy to understand.

We’ll start with a simple definition… What is a structured product? Structured products are a type of financial investment that you can buy - and later sell (if it makes sense) - just like a stock or a bond. They show up in your investment account as a single security with its own ID number (called an ISIN). As the name suggests, there is some clever "structuring" behind them: think of them as a "combo meal" in finance - they bundle two or more financial instruments together into