France's traditional all-purpose savings account, the Livret A, recorded record outflows at the end of September, marking an extensive redirection of funds towards shares issued by property investment companies and financial products wrapped as unit-linked life insurance contracts. The latter provide more lucrative returns in the context of low interest rates, even if it means that investors have to accept more risk.

In October, Societe Generale issued Europe Rendement Decembre 2015, an income product that was distributed by Exclusive Partners. The product is eligible for the life insurance wrapper and offers a 6.5% coupon, as long as the Eurostoxx 50 does not fall by more than 20% of its initial level. Exclusive Partners also launched Proximité Patrimoine 2015, a private placement issued by Morgan Stanley and linked to a basket of four funds, namely Carmignac Patrimoine, CPR Croissance Reactive, DNCA Invest Eurose and M&G Optimal Income Fund.

Natixis was also active, with 10 new medium-term notes, five of which were distributed by its own sales forces, while the rest were created in collaboration with external providers, including Banque Populaire Gestion Privee, Barclays, Equitim and Nortia: the first of the four opted for Natixis for the launching of Eurostep Horizon 3, a fund with a €5,000 minimum investment, which is eligible as an equity savings plan and life insurance contracts. The Grand Large 2015, a 10-year MTN resulting from the collaboration of Natixis and Equitim is linked to the CAC Large 60 Equal Weight ER index.

"It’s much easier within the life insurance wrapper to issue products linked to equities than, for example, credit or rates," according to Damien Leclair, co-founder and chief executive officer at Equitim, an independent consulting and brokerage company, speaking to SRP at the end of October. "As the rates are so low, it is impossible to structure an interesting [credit-linked note] within a life insurance contract," said Leclair. "That’s why equities have such a large market share in structured products."

Thirty-one structured retail products, with an estimated sales volume of €306m, were added to the SRP France database in October. In the same month last year, 25 products were launched. The number of tranche products listed in the SRP database is 3,424, with sales of €193,559bn: of these, 1,752 products with an outstanding volume of €66,542bn, are still live. Assets under management for the 46 live continuous products were €4,453bn at the end of October.

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