UK providers go back to basics

At a time when there is little innovation in payouts, structured products providers in the UK are looking at ways to broaden the investor base by offering more stock exchange-listed products and funds, and take market share from the vast fund sector. Michael Marray reports

The UK structured products market remains very heavily based on the FTSE 100, with a range of fairly simple payouts. And though emerging-markets products such as Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) equity baskets have returned to popularity this year, bankers see little sign of any lessening of the dominance of domestic equities, which is much greater than in other major European markets.  

One reason is that in times of crisis conservative investors always prefer stocks that they know well