Structured products
WHAT IS THIS? Structured products are investments that have multiple components. For retail investors, the most common form is a bond plus an option – these tend to be standardised, sold in small tickets and large volumes. Managing the risks of large structured products portfolios is one of the biggest challenges dealers face.
Trading systems: structured products/cross-asset – Murex
Murex won the Trading systems: structured products/cross-asset award at the 2025 Risk Markets Technology Awards for its MX.3 platform, praised for its flexibility and advanced analytics
Structured products house of the year: UBS
Risk Awards 2025: bulked-up structuring team is more than just the sum of its parts
Best structured products support system: Goldhorse Capital – Extramile
Goldhorse Capital – a Hong Kong-headquartered fintech platform now making waves across Asia’s structured products market – wins Best structured products support system at this year’s Asia Risk Awards
Supply chain decoupling fires up alpha focus at BofA
Talking Heads: Stock dispersion sees funds gross up on long/short baskets, while US structured notes come of age
Vega peak was foothill in historic Nikkei selloff
JFSA scrutiny has curbed issuance of autocallables, so stock plunge generated light re-hedging
Gamma jitters from defined outcome funds
Tumbling equity markets could flip dealers’ exposure to gamma from long to short, leading to hedging losses
Asia moves: Senior hires at HKEX, UBS and more
Latest job news from across the industry
T+1 shift sparks dividend chaos in HK structured products
Products staying on T+2 leave providers scrambling to deal with ex-dividend dates caught inbetween
DVAs inflate US banks’ liabilities by $4.9bn
Credit spread retrenchment since last year’s crisis comes with flipside of larger structured-product liabilities
Regulatory crackdown puts Korea autocalls in deep freeze
Mis-selling fears see distributors pull back, leading to 40% issuance fall in a month
Options market still searching for cause of the Vix plunge
BIS paper blames yield-enhancing structured products, but market participants are unconvinced
Canada’s FRTB pioneers get snowed on fund-linked trades
As Basel capital reforms go live, risk managers eye early adopters’ progress and push to improve capital treatment of fund-linked products
How China’s equities intervention caused a quant fund quake
Popular leveraged market-neutral trade crumbled after government stepped in to support major indexes in February
China snowball knock-ins fuel futures sell-off
Market participants say issuer re-hedging has helped drive Chinese equity indexes lower
Corporates eye FX options as hedging costs shrink
With hedge ratios tipped to rise, dealers say treasurers are increasingly open to optionality
First Korean issuer joins Hong Kong warrants market
Kisa anticipates warrant and autocallable hedging synergies
At US banks, paper losses on HTM securities hit new high
Bank of America leads way as mortgage-backed securities drive aggregate rise in Q3
Huatai launches its first Hong Kong CBBC
Two more securities houses set to follow Chinese firm into Hong Kong’s listed structured products market
Korea’s ‘worst-of’ times are here to stay
Chinese houses’ success in Korean autocalls could stymie hopes of diversifying the product mix
Swiss autocalls ‘10% away from disaster’ as Roche shares slide
Popular ‘worst-of’ products flirt with downside barriers, but issuers see no cause for hedge alarm
Banks mull structured notes as term SOFR basis hedge
ARRC signals opposition to passing term SOFR-SOFR basis risk to investors via structured payoffs