Sustainability continues to be the keyword in the industry, while Asia staff moves in the wealth management space remain on the agenda.

French asset manager Amundi has rolled out the first two responsible structured funds that invest directly in the stocks comprising the underlying. The fund integrates a new approach of the environmental criteria in its management method as it is directly invested in the stocks comprising the underlying index (the Euronext CDP Environment France EW Decrement index 5%). The stocks are selected based on the quality of their environmental practices. In addition, the fund deploys several derivative instruments to deliver an autocall payoff.

In other innovation related news, investors can invest in ‘high growth’ plant-based companies via a new actively managed certificate linked to the companies involved in the animal-free economy. Beyond Investing’s first foray into directing investments led it to the animal-free economy in 2018 with the world’s first vegan-friendly and climate-conscious exchange-traded fund (ETF). It has since gone down the self-indexing route and is using AMC wrapper to package its indices, launching the Europe Vegan Climate Index, and the Vegan World Index which is available as a Swiss SIX-listed certificate, issued by Leonteq. Among stocks in the Index are companies creating plant-based protein such as Beyond Meat and Oatly; plant-based drinks like Celsius and Zevia; cruelty-free personal products such as ELF Beauty and Fancl; and animal-free farming like Calavo Growers and Costa Group, among others.

S&P Dow Jones Indices’ new S&P Developed 100 Gender Equality & Inclusion Equal Weight Index has been licensed to J.P. Morgan which is already trading the index as an underlying of one retail structured product. The index, launched on 2 August, measures the equal-weighted performance of the highest-scoring stocks by S&P Global Gender Diversity Score from the S&P Developed LargeMidCap. This is the first gender related gauge by the index provider and the third in the structured products market – the two other indices recorded on the SRP database include the Solactive Equileap Global exAPAC Gender Equality 100 NTR Index and Solactive Global Gender Diversity Index.

Credit Suisse has appointed three senior roles in Apac wealth management as Francois Monnet, head of private banking (PB) North Asia and chief executive for Hong Kong, will retire at the end of December after a 14-year career at the Swiss bank. Effective from 1 January 2022, Benjamin Cavalli will be promoted to head of wealth management Apac from head of PB South Asia and Singapore CEO, Jinyee Young will be deputy head of wealth management Apac based in Singapore and Chien Chien Wong will be Singapore CEO, marking the bank’s first female CEO in this market – in addition to her current role as the chief operating officer, Apac.

Also in Asia, Indosuez Wealth Management, the wealth management brand of Crédit Agricole group, has appointed Josephine Tom as fixed income specialist for the bank’s Hong Kong branch. Tom has over 20 years of experience specialising in fixed income. Prior to joining Indosuez, she spent 16 years

Marex is seeking to expand its reach and capitalise on Luma’s distribution network. The issuer will connect to Luma’s automatic pricing API to respond to price requests automatically and enhance efficiency in the issuance process and offer a more competitive price, according to Joost Burgerhout, head of financial products at Marex.

Marex Solutions has seen a substantial increase in number of products and trades, and notional as well as “greater recognition from investors” over the last year.

Marex’s product suite ranges from index autocalls to bitcoin and cryptoasset-linked structured products.

SRP end of year coverage is also looking at best performing and best-selling products in the world’s major jurisdictions.

Market-cap indices remained dominant for the largest autocallable market in Asia Pacific, South Korea, with the S&P 500, Eurostoxx 50, Kospi 200, Hang Seng China Enterprises (HSCEI) and Nikkei 225 leading the rankings. These indices were primarily accessed through baskets. Among them, the use of Kospi 200 slightly decreased in H2 21 compared with the first half of the year in terms of the number of products linked to it. 

UBS Financial Services delivered the best performing products in the US market during 2021 with three Return Optimisation Securities products each tied to MetLife, Citigroup, and Petroleo Brasileiro ADR with a performance of 65.83%, 59.78%, and 58.38%, respectively. Raymond James distributed two of the best-performing products in the ranks both of which had an estimated annualised performance of 44.39% pa and were issued by Morgan Stanley Finance.

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