This is an extract from the July 2026 Blue Chip Structured Products Roundtable titled “How and why a financial planner should incorporate structured products into an investment plan.”
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Adam Reeves (Absa, and Chairman of SAIFM):
“There are different types of access points. There’s obviously a listed structured product. There’s unlisted, and both of those are unwrapped, i.e. they’re not in a life license. And then you get things put in life license. What’s the difference between all of those? And from the perspective of the advisor that’s going out there, each one of those has a different phase category or phase class of product that people are licensed to go out and sell.
“Does that make a difference, or are we just basically saying if you operate in the life license policy area, that’s fine. You can have a structured product there. If you operate on the listed environment with personal share portfolios, that’s fine. And then there’s obviously the Lisp in the middle.”
Kevin Swartz (Head of Distribution for Index and Structured Solutions at Absa Group):
“From an issuer’s perspective, that’s an accessibility point, right? We are obviously driven to make sure we get the furthest reach in the market. So we want to be on live wrappers. We want to be at Lisps. We want to be on the JSE or on the exchange wherever it’s required.
“So first of all, let me just unpack listed versus unlisted. For a product to have to be listed, it has to reference offshore indices or offshore exposure at least. And when that’s done, it’s called inward listing and it uses the bank’s what we call macroprudential limits. So, very simply, if you want to go buy dollars, you’ve got your annual allowance.
“But when you buy a inward listed structured product, i.e. a product that gets dollar or foreign currency exposure offshore, but it’s converted back to rands when you see a price on screen, and when you mature and you invested rands at the beginning, you’re using the bank’s macroprudential limits, not your own, so you’re not tapping into your offshore allowance.
“Those have to be listed from a SARS point of view to ensure that they’re correctly regulated and reported on. And there’s a whole bunch of reporting that goes on in the background when they are not inward listed or they are facing an institutional client who can use their offshore allowance. Then we can move into the world of OTC. I think that covers the difference between listed and OTC.
“In terms of the advisor piece, I don’t really feel it’s my place to go into detail on the licenses required to sell. I think what’s always important from our perspective is that the end advisor receives adequate training and paraphernalia and documentation and support from us as the issuer to ensure that they are able to offer the best advice to the client.”
