Best structured product provider - Barclays Capital

The last few years have been challenging ones for structured products, but the ability to deliver client-centric solutions across asset classes from one desk has been very important, according to Kevin Burke, head of investor solutions and Barclays Capital fund solutions distribution.

Clients have been looking for simplicity, transparency and liquidity in structured products, he explains, while he believes that investing in technology has paid huge dividends. “To have a market leading ecommerce platform which allows our clients the ability to price and execute efficiently ideas across asset classes has been a increasing important component of our client service.”

He highlights the Comet platform, designed by the investor solutions team, and which now has over 140 private banks using it to tailor bespoke structured investments across a wide range of structures.

Mr Burke says Barclays Capital has been seeing increasing levels of interest in listed products, for example into the iPath ETN product suite, which spans commodities, volatility, equity, fixed income and FX and had attracted $7.1bn by the end of September and $450bn since inception.

With the return of uncertainty to the markets, Mr Burke says that the more risk-averse clients have been focusing on fixed income-like investments. “In terms of the HNW and UHNW channels, I would say that the investment sentiment has been more mixed, with more thematic investments and with an eye on volatility,’ he adds.

“We have seen a lot of interest in our commodity and volatility suite of products as investors continue to look for diversification and also efficient hedging tools,” says Mr Burke. “Another theme we saw from sophisticated investors was in gaining transparent access to a variety of asset classes via quantitative investment strategies.” ES