A Study on Retail Structured Product Market and Financial Regulation in Korea

This study looks at the characteristics and current status of retail structured product market of Korea and tries to explain, in particular, issues related to issue price, cost of hedging, and overpricing. We also analyzed the perspective of the government and the related regulatory policies. We examined various performance measures for portfolios composed of the KOSPI200 Covered Call Index and other assets in order to change the viewpoint of the authorities that the trading of structured products, such as ELS (equity-linked securities) and DLS (debt-linked securities), is in fact not a zero-sum game between the issuers and investors. The empirical results show that the KOSPI200 Covered Call Index has a superior performance compared to the KOSPI200 Index and the others. In addition, from the perspective of certainty equivalent excess returns, the KOSPI200 Covered Call Index also displays the possibility of improving the utility level of risk-averse retail investors. However, it is difficult in reality for individual investors to construct efficient portfolios that employ covered call strategies using options. Hence, individual investors can form optimal portfolios that benefit indirectly from such covered call strategies via investment in financial derivative products issued by securities firms that are able to more easily utilize investment strategies that incorporate options to form optimum portfolios. This means that both the issuer and investor can profit from these financial derivative products and, therefore, it is not a zero-sum game.