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SCB Wealth, the wealth management business of at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), has traded structured products in notional of approximately THB40 billion (US$1.1 billion) year-to-date.

The wealth manager structured products business has accounted for nearly 30% of the total notional traded year-to-date, and represents an increase from 10% in 2021, according to Sornchai Suneta, CIO and product function executive vice president.

"The volume is expected to increase to THB60 billion by end of this year," Suneta told SRP. "Our structured products business has been expanding rapidly after we began to develop a wealth management digitalised platform five years ago."

In Taiwan, Standard Chartered has launched the first ESG structured note issued in Taiwan by the Bank with a US$40m ESG structured Formosa note that sold to investors in Taiwan.

The UK bank’s inaugural Formosa note issuance follows several sustainable finance transactions from Standard Chartered over the last few months including a sustainable fiduciary deposit offering in the UK, an ESG Islamic repo transaction with a Malaysian bank, and its first Sustainable Export Letter of Credit programme.

The US$40m Formosa note, issued by Standard Chartered Bank from its note, certificate and warrant programme, has a 10-year tenor and is callable after three years by the issuer.

A survey conducted by the regulators in Hong Kong has found that the number of structured products traded dropped by 14% in 2021 year-on-year despite being the predominant financial product type. The survey results released on 27 September by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) are based on responses from 327 licensed corporations (LCs) and 63 registered institutions (RIs).

Financial product providers sold non-exchange traded investment products with transaction amount of HK$5.0 trillion (US$637 billion) to 775,812 investors in Hong Kong SAR. The transaction amount, which LCs and RIs accounted for 21% and 79%, respectively, is a 12% decrease year-on-year (YoY) 'due to unfavourable market sentiment and volatile markets in 2021 caused by the continuous impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened geopolitical risks and expectations of interest rate hikes'.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Barclays and Barclays Bank (BBPLC) for mistakenly issuing US$15 billion worth of structured notes and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) above the volume it had registered for sale under its BBPLC US Shelf and failing ‘to implement internal control to track such transactions in real time’.

The two companies have agreed to pay a US$200m civil penalty - the SEC additionally ordered Barclays bank to pay ‘disgorgement and prejudgment interest’ of more than US$161m, which was ‘deemed satisfied by an offer of rescission Barclays bank made to investors in the unregistered offerings’.

DeFi Derivatives Protocol Ribbon Finance has launched a high-performance options exchange called Aevo.

The new facility is the latest in the company’s suite of structured financial products and is aimed at investors seeking to trade ethereum options on-chain. Built on Ethereum, the first iteration will only offer ETH options, but other cryptocurrencies will become available in the coming months, including Bitcoin, stated the firm.

The Aevo platform is built on a ‘custom’ Ethereum rollup, built by Ribbon which will offer ‘deep liquidity at launch’ thanks to partnerships with five options-centric market makers.

In the US, sales volumes increased by 34% month-on-month with high demand for products on single indices.

Some US$7.6 billion was collected from 2,606 structured products with strike dates in August 2022 – slightly below the monthly average for the past 12 months, which stood at US$7.9 billion and 2,649 products, respectively.

Sales volumes were down 11% year-on-year (YoY), however, compared to the previous month they increased by 34% (July 2022: US$5.6 billion from 2,204 products). The average sales volume in August was US$2.9m per product.

The highest sales volumes in the past 12-months were recorded in March 2022 when US$9.9 billion was gathered from 3,105 products.

Image: pingebat/Adobe Stock