Eurizon Capital, part of Italy's Intesa SanPaolo group, has announced plans to make its first structured fund, launched last week, available to distributors beyond the group's banks and ultimately to expand across Europe.
"We are going to make the product available through third-party distributors. Eurizon Capital counts 100 distributors in Italian territory, and we are planning to make the product available through these distributors," said Andrea Cecchini, head of sales and marketing at Eurizon Capital, in an interview with SRP.
"In other European countries we are [also] going to use Intesa SanPaolo's distributors, but Eurizon Capital is planning to expand its activity across the whole European continent in the years to come. At the moment, we have some people working from Budapest on eastern European," he said.
Cecchini said he would like to launch a whole family of structured funds, starting before the end of February. "For the time being, I can say that we are focusing our studies on ways to mitigate risk, using additional expertise from our group investment bank Banca IMI."
The first product, Eurizon Focus Formula Azioni 2014, structured with fixed income instruments and an equity swap, guarantees initial capital at maturity plus the 100% of the performance of a basket comprising the DJEuroStoxx50, S&P500 and Nikkei225, capped at 160%.
Cecchini said the firm is very much focused on the results of a GfD Eurisko's survey entitled Multifinanziaria Retail, which concluded that 66% of investors do not want to undertake any risk in their investment and 42% would invest in an investment product only if it guarantees the capital return at maturity.
"Our new fund, Eurizon Focus Formula Azioni 2014, follows these preferences," he said. "In my opinion, it is a good opportunity to get the most of the low market levels registered in this period... The six year term is a good period of time for such an investment,' he said.
Eurizon Capital, part of the Intesa SanPaolo group, operates via retail-oriented Eurizon Capital SGR, Eurizon Capital SA for Luxembourg funds, hedge fund arm Eurizon AI SGR and quant-based mutual fund manager Epsilon SGR.