This article was featured in Agefi FINANCE.
By Tara York, Head of EMEA, Luma Financial Technologies
With a decades-long tradition of structured investing, Switzerland is today the world’s leading center for structured products. The growth and resilience of this market is a testament to the compelling advantages that these hybrid financial instruments can offer investors – especially in terms of diversification, flexibility and customization. In the Swiss market, a noticeable shift is underway as investors increasingly focus on payoff profiles rather than product categories when deciding how to invest.
The Swiss structured products market is experiencing continued growth, with turnover rising by almost one-fifth to over CHF 235 billion in 2025. The enduring appeal of structured products in Switzerland reflects their importance as a source of payoff diversification and risk-adjusted returns. In this market, the yield enhancement sector accounts for 50% of turnover, followed by leverage products at 26%, highlighting sustained investor demand for these versatile and highly customizable solutions. Further, by allowing investors to strike a balance between upside potential and downside mitigation, structured products have become a tactical tool allowing them to invest with confidence, even in unpredictable market conditions.
Choosing between product categories – notes, certificates or funds – was historically the starting point for investors seeking to participate in these products. Each of these categories was treated as a distinct type of structured product linked to specific operational processes, distribution channels and regulations, even when the underlying payoff logic was similar. However, this approach is now changing as investors become less concerned about what a product is called and more interested in what it actually does. In other words: payoff profiles are taking precedence over product labels.
Challenging markets and enhanced transparency as drivers of change
One key driver of this development is the more challenging market environment: higher volatility, changes in interest rates, inflationary pressures and greater dispersion across asset classes have sharpened investors’ awareness of downside risk and payoff asymmetry. Consequently, they are now focusing more on how returns are generated and on the conditions under which losses could occur.
Enhanced transparency and the increased comparability of structured products are also driving this shift in investor attitudes. In Switzerland, for example, SIX Swiss Exchange and the Swiss Structured Products Association, together with other industry players, have made great strides in standardizing product classifications, enhancing transparency and providing clearer pricing frameworks. Sophisticated platforms have also boosted transparency and standardization, making it easier to describe strategies in outcome-based terms and to compare payoff profiles across different formats. A prime example is Luma Technologies’ use of SIX CONNEXOR to standardize structured product reference data and lifecycle management across issuers and regions. Such developments make it easier for investors to analyze and compare features when deciding how and where to invest. By focusing on outcomes, they can choose the structures that best fit their expectations and goals to achieve smoother investment journeys.
Same payoff logic, different wrappers
A defined outcome exposure can be structured through a classic structured product, implemented via an AMC or, in certain markets, launched in the form of a structured protection ETF. While implementation differs, the underlying economic exposure is often comparable. These wrappers increasingly function as alternative execution paths for the same investment logic. Once the payoff objective is defined, product selection becomes a practical decision. Investors and advisors focus less on labels and more on considerations such as tax treatment, liquidity and regulatory constraints. The economic intent remains constant, while the legal form adapts to investor needs.
This has led to a more comparative approach. Classic structured products, notes, AMCs and fund-based solutions can increasingly be evaluated side by side. Payoff diagrams and risk-return profiles often carry more weight than product names, enabling clearer comparisons. No single wrapper is universally superior. Each offers advantages depending on investor profile, time horizon and operational context. An increasing ability to implement similar payoff logic across structures introduces flexibility and structural neutrality into portfolio construction.
Coexistence instead of crowding-out
The emergence of new wrappers has raised concerns that innovation in one format may come at the expense of another. The question is often framed around whether familiar retail wrappers such as ETFs could draw allocations away from structures that have historically been more institutional in nature.
An alternative perspective is that these formats play complementary roles. ETF-based implementations can lower the barrier to entry by offering standardized access, transparency and ease of use. The growing familiarity with defined-outcome concepts can support greater investor comfort and, over time, increase demand for more tailored solutions delivered through structured notes, AMCs or other established wrappers. Even where ETF structures involve certain capital or balance-sheet trade-offs for issuers, they may still represent an effective way to introduce outcome-based thinking to a broader retail audience.
This evolution is particularly relevant for Switzerland, where decades of structuring expertise have shaped an investment culture grounded in defined outcomes and precise payoff engineering. The continued growth of wrapper innovation reflects a market that is comfortable separating payoff design from delivery format. Going forward, the defining feature of structured investing will no longer be the form of delivery, but the clarity of the outcome, the transparency of risk/return and the discipline with which those outcomes are engineered.
