Investment sentiment has started to shift

Structured notes dominated the volume by accounting for more than 70%.

Moreover, the traded notional was even higher in H2 22 year-on-year with assets under management (AuM) growing by 20% as at the year-end.

“Our customer base also grew, which is a very happy scenario for us,” said Lau. “This demonstrates how we’ve successfully pivoted to diversification, a strategy we’ve been working on since

“For credit, we’re more active in the cash bond space. I think we should use any financial asset that can be leveraged on each other and continue to drive cross-sell synergies serving the interest of our customers.”

Lau also noted that as a consumer bank, UOB favours underlyings that are easy to explain to retail investors and access to some assets like commodities are offered “via simpler and direct solutions such as our gold savings account and spot gold (XAU) capability”.

According to Lau, the bank also set up a catalogue of payoffs including double no touch, wedding cake, range accrual, capped floored floater and other structures as part of the preparation for its diversification strategy.

“Our annual product training for sales advisors ensured they are already ready to deploy suitable solutions serving customer needs, sentiment and market condition,” he said. “We needed to learn how to encourage our customers to stay invested even when market goes through a different cycle.”