Gilliat Financial Solutions has reached an exclusive agreement in the offshore arena with Alpha Diversify, a Financial Conduct Authority-regulated fund and structured products distribution firm.
Gilliat managing director Adrian Neave (pictured) told SRP that Alpha Diversity will act as an introducer to the UK provider's range of structured products.
"They don't work for us and they're not employed by us," said Neave. "They are an independent firm that specialises in making introductions to financial intermediaries and they are going to be doing that for us in the structured products arena. The focus will be more on our offshore range which is managed by Andy Savill, rather than the UK range."
According to Neave, the agreement will support Gilliat's distribution efforts in the offshore market. "We are not going to have a dedicated sales team for every country we want to cover and a number of providers have chosen this route to increase their distribution capabilities," he said. "This does not change the way we operate but provides us with another way to make introductions."
However, Neave remains cautious about the potential commercial success of such distribution agreements.
"It is not easy to find people who are good at distributing structured products and, in our experience, a significant number of firms take on this kind of role but do not deliver very much," he said. "I know that we are not paying them and it's their business but at the end of the day, it is a waste of time if these firms do not make introductions that are commercially viable. They waste their time because they don't make any money and they waste our time because we still have to hold their hands and dedicate time to them."
Alpha Diversify's managing director of fund and structured product distribution, Simon Bottle, will be in charge of introducing Gilliat's structured products range to advisers for offshore, expatriate and emerging markets.
Some of the products recently advertised by Alpha Diversify include a quarterly income builder note linked to the FTSE which was hedged by Commerzbank; a semi-annual knockout structure linked to the EuroStoxx50, China's iShares FTSE A50 and Brazil's iShares MSCI; an annual knockout linked to the FTSE100 and the SPDR Gold trust which was hedged by RBC; and an annual autocall linked to the FTSE100, the Eurostoxx50, the China HSCEI Index and MSCI Singapore Free Index, which was hedged by UBS.
Bottle could not be reached for comment before press time.