PRIIPs introduction

Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance Products, in short “PRIIPs” cover a large range of financial products offered to investors including retail investors. The European market for PRIIPs are estimated to exceed EUR 20,000 milliards (EUR 20 trillion).

PRIIPs include investment funds, structured products including convertible bonds, unit-linked insurance products, derivatives and more. Shares and futures traded on regulated financial markets are not PRIIPs.

It may be a little confusing but think about it this way: if you for example take two shares and package them as a new product for sale to retail investors then your new product - consisting of the two shares - will be a PRIIP.

Thus a PRIIP always has some exposure to some underlying assets - as in the above example, the two shares.

The value of a PRIIP vary over time and thus involve some degree of risk of investment value loss to the investor. PRIIPs are therefore regulated through EU Regulations across the EU and the EFTA countries too: the purpose of the Regulation is to protect retail investors.

One of the outcomes of this EU Regulation is to ensure that PRIIP distributors provide retail investors with a short document that informs the investor about the PRIIP investment product: the investment objectives, the risks & opportunities, the costs, the intended buyer and more information such as the recommended investment product holding period.

PS Qvonto has made a complete and automated system to service PRIIP manufactures (producers) - we call this product “Qvonto Regulatory“ - and this includes full production of the final PRIIP so-called Key Information Document in short “PRIIP KID” .pdf with a click of a button or on an automated basis.