BNP Paribas Corporate and Institutional Banking today announced that it has won two 2016 UK Captive Services Awards for Most Innovative Use of an ART Structure and Collateral Service Provider.
The Captive review annual awards seek to recognise service providers to the captive insurance sector which have demonstrated exceptional customer service and innovation in the past 12 months. The judges looked for breadth of service offering, efficiencies and benefits achieved for the client in assessing the Collateral Service Provider winner, while the Most Innovative Use of an ART Structure award sought to commend firms which have displayed the most creative and innovative product design while ensuring effective cover.
BNP Paribas’ Athena Dividend product, which enables the investor to monetise the discount in Eurostoxx Dividends, won the Most Innovative Use of an ART Structure. This was a key initiative launched by the bank’s Alternative Risk Transactions (ART) team, which was established in early 2015 to transform hard-to-shift risks into profitable trades for sophisticated investors.
According to one major institutional investor client of BNP Paribas, “the structure not only increases expected returns, but also contributes to portfolio diversification which is absolutely key to our investment strategy.”
For the Collateral Service Provider award, BNP Paribas developed a structure allowing the collateral provider to make an investment with a higher expected return – placing capital as collateral without losing the upside potential of a regular investment, and with 100% capital protection and therefore no downside risk. Collateral providers usually do not get any remuneration on collateral which is either cash or bonds yielding low returns.
Franck Launay, head of Reinsurance Solutions at BNP Paribas, said, “Our idea was to design a fixed-term investment without compromising liquidity and capital protection, two highly valued features for captives.”
For more information including the full list of winners, please visit: https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/143331/327150/?&m
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About BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas is present in 75 countries with more than 185,000 employees, including 145,000 in Europe. It ranks highly in its two core activities: Retail Banking & Services (comprised of Domestic Markets and International Financial Services) and Corporate & Institutional Banking. In Europe, the Group has four domestic markets (Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg) and BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the leader in consumer lending. BNP Paribas is rolling out its integrated retail banking model across Mediterranean basin countries, in Turkey, in Eastern Europe and a large network in the western part of the United States. In its Corporate & Institutional Banking and International Financial Services activities, BNP Paribas also enjoys top positions in Europe, a strong presence in the Americas and solid and fast-growing businesses in Asia-Pacific.