Australia: Capital Protected Products on the Rise (Investor Daily)

Greater competition between issuers

By Victoria Papandrea

SYDNEY, Australia -- The take-up of capital protected structured products in Australia has increased over the past few years along with the competition between issuers.

There was around $4 billion dollars worth of 100 per cent capital guaranteed products sold to Australian investors in 2007.

This represented a 50 per cent growth in issuance of the products compared to 2006 figures, according to JPMorgan vice president equity derivatives and structured products David Jones-Prichard.

"One of the reasons for that was an increase in the quality of the products we've seen over the last two to three years in Australia," he said.

"We've really started to see more flexibility, versatility and just a much more expansive and innovative range of structured products throughout the market as well as a lot of competition between issuers."

There is currently around a dozen issuers in the Australian market that are providing a variety of different structured products to Australian investors, Jones-Prichard said.

"There's also greater technology that's gone into the products so not only is there greater competition between the issuers but there's also greater call on our resources from our global desks," he said.

For the original article from Australia's Investor Daily, click here.