Best structured products support system: Goldhorse Capital – Extramile

Smaller multifamily offices and external asset managers in Singapore and Hong Kong often lack the resources for setting up fully staffed structured products teams, thereby missing out on some of the innovative ideas, as well as a systemic quotation process, that could drive business growth. This is where Goldhorse comes in – a Hong Kong-headquartered fintech platform now making waves across Asia’s structured products market

Goldhorse’s platform doesn’t just deliver value to the smaller players in the market. Larger organisations can also derive significant benefits from the range of quotation and execution tools the company provides.

Tiffany Cheung, Goldhorse Capital

“No matter how big the structured products team might be, firms still need to rely on a system for efficient price quotation. Relationship managers might be quoting hundreds of structured products every day. This is where we can help,” says Tiffany Cheung, head of product specialists at Goldhorse.

Goldhorse rolled out its Extramile platform in 2020. The firm has licences from the Securities and Futures Commission to conduct Type 1 and Type 4 business in Hong Kong, which means it can deal in securities and advise on securities. Goldhorse also has local operations in Singapore.

The popularity of Extramile has been growing across the region at terrific speed. Between June 2023 and May 2024, Goldhorse onboarded more than 40 clients, bringing the total number of firms that use its services to over 130. These include big names, such as KGI Securities Singapore, Haitong International Securities and Noah Wealth Management.

“Our key value proposition is to provide seamless end-to-end architecture and product experience for our clients, from pre-trade right the way through to post-trade. Word-of-mouth referrals are now kicking as more and more people see the benefits of our solutions,” says Cheung.
 

Price quotations and product ideas

To manage client portfolios, external asset managers (EAMs) typically book assets with multiple private banks. As a result, EAMs often have to use different platforms to quote structured products. If the private bank is less digitally savvy, this may even need to conducted via email, which is hugely inefficient.

Extramile circumvents this problem by presenting quotation results automatically from different issuers in a single easy-to-use format. This saves relationship managers valuable time.

Sixteen major structured products issuers in the region support the platform, including Goldman Sachs, UBS and Citigroup. Singapore’s OCBC was the latest issuer to join, inking an agreement with Goldhorse in July.

Goldhorse’s value proposition neatly fits into the growing trend of relationship managers increasingly leaving private banks to set up their own EAMs.

One of this year’s Asia Risk Awards judges commented: “Goldhorse’s software enables it to do this by automatically providing the capabilities of a products and dealing desk. One could argue this trend would be much reduced without Goldhorse.”

An efficient price quotation is only one side of the platform. The other huge advantage for many structured product sellers is the ability to tap into fresh ideas.

“Our ideas come from two areas,” says Cheung. “We have our own product specialist team that can summarise new ideas on our platform, based on what clients are trading across the whole of the private wealth management space. We also work closely with our issuers, who present product ideas that we can incorporate into the platform. Because we have a very neutral position, we are not pushed to promote any product for a particular firm or issuer.”

 

Edward Liu, Goldhorse Capital

Enhancements

Over the past 12 months, Goldhorse has made a few important enhancements to its Extramile platform.

One was the introduction of a new market on its mobile application for shopping structured products. This creates a lower barrier of entry for clients to purchase high-touch products. For example, a client can see what products other clients have traded (anonymously) in the market. If the client wants to participate in the same investment, they can. Not only that, but Goldhorse allows the minimum ticket size to be reduced from the initial launch size, thereby extending the reach of small clients into the structured products universe.

Another innovation was the establishment of a community forum, which was built as a place for clients to share experiences, discuss topics of mutual interest and raise any questions they might have about the structured products market.

Goldhorse has also refined the Lifecycle Monitoring module on its platform to expand the functionality and improve the way information is shown to the user.

Looking to the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to play a key role on the platform.

ALL THE WINNERS

Asia Risk Technology Awards 2024 

All of the winners of this year's Asia Risk Technology Awards

“Our goal is to deliver increasingly pertinent insights to our clients and incorporate AI-driven tools to further streamline the structured product sales process,” says Edward Liu, Goldhorse’s chief executive officer.

Goldhorse is currently investigating how natural language processing can be used to condense research notes into easy-to-read summaries, and how AI can be used to extract information from the large amounts of data the company captures.

Cheung says: “In everything we do, we seek to provide more insights and efficiency so our clients can make better investment decisions.”

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