The French bank targets a market with over 70 private banks and more than 500 asset managers
Vontobel digital platform for structured products, deritrade, has expanded its product offering to investors with the introduction of autocallable barrier reverse convertible payoff structures from BNP Paribas as the French bank becomes the eighth issuer on the platform.
Joining Switzerland’s ‘leading structured products platforms for private banking clients’ will enable the French bank to ‘gain immediate access to over 70 Swiss banks and 550 external asset managers with an addressable AuM potential of over CHF 2’000 billion – in a purely digital fashion, since deritrade offers a fully automated service for the end client’ said Renaud Meary (pictured), global head of private banking and distribution at BNP Paribas global markets It.
"Switzerland has been for many years one of our key markets in Europe, where we boast one of the deepest and widest coverage among the industry," Meary told SRP. "This type of agreement and recent hires we have made on this market will allow us to reach even more clients, in the most efficient way. This strategy is proving fruitful as our activity in this market did increase so far this year vs last year, in spite of difficult conditions faced by the whole structured products market.
"[The move] is fully aligned with our global strategy aimed at capturing the flows and at partnering with the most prominent platforms aggregating such flows."
Year to date, the Vontobel deritrade platform saw a total of CHF4.1 billion of products transacted on the platform – an increase of 28% compared to the first half of 2018, despite a decline in stock market volumes. In 2017, the issuance volume going through deritrade stood at CHF4.6bn.
Roger Studer, head of Vontobel investment banking said the addition of BNP Paribas is a gain for the platform because of ‘their expertise in the world of structured products, specifically in autocallable barrrier reverse convertibles’.
‘[This] reinforces deritrade`s positioning as a leading digital structured products platform for institutional clients,’ said Studer, adding ‘BNP Paribas, as an established leader in structured products, offers us a truly global reach and prominence in this area and opens possibilities for future expansion and synergies of the platform.’
Currently there are seven issuers on this platform including Vontobel, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, UBS and Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB).
BNP Paribas is the eighth most active issuer of structured products in Europe. The French bank has marketed 38,500 structured products in the second quarter of 2019, down 34% from 58,100 products launched by the bank in the same quarter last year, according to SRP data.
The vast majority of the bank’s products were listed certificates targeted at investors in Germany and Austria. In France, the bank sold 100 structures – worth approximately €420m (US$464m) – which were distributed via, among others, Crystal Partenaires, Equitim, Hedios Vie, and Privalto.
The 78 certificates launched in Italy accumulated sales of €488m in the quarter while the bank was also active in Belgium (€206m from 27 products), Ireland (€25m from nine products), and the Netherlands (€19m from 19 products).