Warming to exotics

The structured products market in the Nordic region has grown rapidly this year. And there is evidence that traditionally conservative investors may be looking to more exotic products. John Ferry reports

When it comes to structured notes, retail investors in the Nordic area have traditionally kept things simple. For the most part, they have bought standard capital-guaranteed notes with a call option on an equity index, and typically shunned the exotic payouts and hybrid notes bought by their contemporaries in southern Europe.

But this could be about to change. There has been a flurry of new products this year that, if not exotic, are certainly more adventurous compared with the region's