The Vienna Stock exchange (VSE) has identified a "massive need" to further efforts to help investors and has renewed its commitment to work on educating Austrian investors with their financial knowledge. The latest effort by the VSE, in a cooperation with Market, a market research company, includes a survey among 800 Austrians as young as 16 aimed at measuring  financial competency which polled a cross-section of the population with 60% lower and 40% higher qualified people.

The survey revealed a lack of investments in securities linked to low investor confidence in financial matters. Only 8% of the investors polled indicated high literacy in economic topics, while 41% said they have good knowledge, and the same percentage saying that they do not have enough financial knowledge; the remaining 7% are insecure about finance and economics. "The Austrian structured products market is one of the oldest in Europe and also quite strong in comparison with Germany," said Christoph Boschan (pictured), chief executive officer of Wiener Börse - VSE. "A stronger use of certificates in times of low interest rates not only provides many opportunities for retail investors, it could also boost equity turnover at Wiener Börse," said Boschan.

VSE has been active in different investment education projects and is offers support for schools by providing pupils and teachers with education and knowledge on capital markets and the stock exchange, as well as via its Vienna Stock Exchange Academy, which provides an educational forum for private and institutional investors. "The Vienna Stock Exchange Academy is targeted at and well accepted among retail investors and employees of financial institutions as well as financial advisors," said Boschan. "The latter can receive education credits for advanced seminars. Seminars on the topics certificates and ETFs have been offered since 2007."

The survey also identified that financial knowledge in schools has a low priority, with 77% of participants indicating that the knowledge is insufficient, while 17% gave no answer and 5% said that the knowledge is enough.

Boschan joined the Austrian Certificate Association (Zertifikate Forum Austria - ZFA) last year as a member of the advisory board and has embarked on the effort to strengthen the certificates market by educating investors as "education is the best investor protection".

"In line with our motto 'Invest global, buy local', we want to bring the world to Austria for our domestic investors," said Boschan. "In June, the Vienna Stock Exchange launched its new 'global market', which offers trading in the most liquid international blue chips. Trading and settlement will be in euros. A market maker ensures attractive prices and liquidity by entering binding quotes. We plan to offer further products, and expanding the quotation list of the Vienna Stock Exchange."

Boschan is also asking for support from regulators, and proposing an exemption from capital yields tax for low-income persons and the re-introduction of the exemption from capital yields tax for long-term investments.

Of the €625.2bn invested by Austrians, 41% is held in cash and low-interest investments, 20% in life insurances, 18% in other equity securities, 9% in certificates, 5% in bonds, 4% in stocks and 3% in other requirements.

Five structured products providers have listed leverage and not flow products on the exchange this year, including Goldman Sachs (four turbo certificates), Erste Group Bank (2,190 products), Raiffeisen Centrobank (4,249 products), UBS (10 trackers/leverage) and Unicredit (one product), according to the VSE.

The same five manufacturers have products striking this year across other German-speaking countries, including UBS (11 products), UniCredit (175 products), Goldman Sachs (14 products), Raiffeisen Centrobank (61 products) and Erste Group Bank (52 products), SRP data.

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