What are Barrier Reverse Convertibles?
When the portfolio pays out instead of just growing.
Most Swiss portfolios are built for growth. Fund units, ETFs, a few individual stocks. That works well as long as you don't need the money. But as soon as a sum falls due — the tax bill, the kitchen renovation, income after retirement — the unpleasant part arrives: you have to sell units. At whatever price happens to apply, not the one you would have liked.
Barrier Reverse Convertibles, BRCs for short, turn this principle around. They are not built to rise as sharply as possible. They are built to pay regularly.
The structure in one paragraph
A BRC is a structured product. Technically it consists of two parts: a bond issued by the issuer and a sold put option on one or several underlyings. The premium from that sold option is the reason a BRC pays a considerably higher coupon than an ordinary bond. You sell the market a form of insurance and get paid for it.
Four key parameters describe every BRC completely:
| Parameter | What it means |
|---|---|
| Underlyings | One or several stocks, often three. The weakest one is decisive — the so-called worst-of principle. |
| Coupon | The fixed interest rate, usually between 4 and 12 percent per year depending on the risk of the underlyings, paid monthly, quarterly or annually. |
| Barrier | The price threshold, usually 55 to 75 percent of the initial level. As long as no underlying breaches it, the capital is returned in full. |
| Term | Typically 6 to 24 months, with a clear redemption date. |
The decisive point: the coupon is paid regardless of how the underlyings develop. It is not tied to a rise in price. The barrier only determines whether the full capital or the shares come back at the end.
Why one BRC pays 4 percent and another 12
A high coupon is not a mark of quality, it is a price tag. It indicates how much risk the investor is taking on. The level follows almost entirely from three variables.
The most important is the volatility of the underlyings. The more sharply a stock swings, the more expensive the insurance you sell to the market, and the higher the coupon. Conservative, defensive names from food, pharmaceuticals or utilities therefore tend to deliver lower coupons, often in the range of 4 to 6 percent. Cyclical names, technology stocks or individual names in special situations reach double-digit coupons. So anyone looking at 12 percent should not be asking about the issuer, but about the underlyings.
The second variable is the barrier. A product with a barrier at 50 percent has a larger buffer and pays correspondingly less than one with a barrier at 75 percent, all else being equal.
The third is the number of underlyings. Because the weakest stock counts in a worst-of product, the coupon rises with every additional name in the basket, especially when the names have little correlation. Three underlyings mean three chances that one of them breaches the barrier.
The rule of thumb that follows is simple: a conspicuously high coupon is always payment for a risk that is disclosed in the term sheet. The pleasant part is that you make that choice yourself. Anyone who wants to sleep well takes defensive underlyings, a low barrier and accepts 5 percent. Anyone who wants more income has to be prepared to actually take the shares into the portfolio at the end.
An example with numbers
Take a BRC of CHF 50'000 on three Swiss stocks with pronounced volatility, with a coupon of 10 percent per year, a barrier at 65 percent and a term of twelve months. A basket of defensive names would yield noticeably less at the same barrier.
Over the term, four quarterly coupons of CHF 1'250 each flow in, CHF 5'000 in total. These payments arrive regardless of whether the three stocks rise, stand still or fall moderately.
At maturity there are two cases. If none of the three stocks has breached the barrier of 65 percent, the CHF 50'000 is repaid in full. If the weakest underlying has fallen below the barrier and closes at, say, 55 percent of its initial level, you receive the shares instead of cash — a value of roughly CHF 27'500. Together with the coupons collected, that comes to CHF 32'500.
The difference from a fund
This is precisely where the two worlds part ways. An equity fund generates income only through price. If it rises, the portfolio grows. If you need money, you sell units and thereby withdraw substance. A BRC generates income through the coupon — a payment stream that arrives in your account without anything having to be sold.
The comparison over our example year, with CHF 50'000 invested in each:
| Market development | Equity fund | BRC at 10 % coupon, barrier 65 % |
|---|---|---|
| Plus 15 percent | Portfolio value up CHF 7'500, no payout | CHF 5'000 in the account, capital returned |
| Sideways, zero percent | No change, no income | CHF 5'000 in the account, capital returned |
| Minus 10 percent | Portfolio value down CHF 5'000 | CHF 5'000 in the account, capital returned |
| Minus 45 percent | Portfolio value down CHF 22'500 | Capital loss of CHF 22'500, cushioned by CHF 5'000 in coupons |
The table simplifies, because a broad fund and three individual names do not carry the same risk. The pattern holds nonetheless: in rising markets the fund wins, in sideways and mildly falling markets the BRC wins. And a portfolio goes through those phases more often over the years than one would like.
What the coupon costs
A high coupon is never free. Anyone buying BRCs should knowingly accept three things.
First, the return is capped. If the underlying rises 40 percent, you still only get the coupon. You trade price potential for predictability.
Second, you carry the equity risk below the barrier in full. The barrier is a buffer, not protection. Once it has been breached, the product behaves like the weakest stock in the basket.
Third, there is issuer risk. Legally, a BRC is a claim against the issuing bank. If that bank defaults, the finest barrier is of no use. It is therefore worth spreading capital across several issuers and keeping track of how much sits with which institution.
Where it gets tedious in practice
A single BRC is still easy to follow. With eight or twelve products it quickly becomes unwieldy. Each has its own underlyings, its own barrier, its own observation rules — sometimes only at maturity, sometimes continuously over the whole term. Add to that different coupon rhythms, possible early redemptions, and the question of which underlying is currently how close to its threshold.
Common e-banking solutions are of little help here. They show the BRCs as positions, and sometimes there is a warning when a barrier is breached. What is missing is exactly what you need on an ongoing basis: the distance to the barrier per underlying, a calendar of upcoming coupon payments, the distribution across issuers, and an overview across all products even when they sit at different banks. Anyone who wants that today usually keeps a spreadsheet and maintains it by hand from the term sheets.
That gap is exactly where we started. Pecugate reads a term sheet automatically and creates the position from it, shows the current distance to the barrier for every underlying, warns early rather than only on a breach, keeps a coupon calendar and presents the issuer distribution. A collection of individual products becomes a portfolio you can actually steer. More on that another time — this was about BRCs themselves.
Conclusion
BRCs are no substitute for a growth portfolio and no miracle solution. They are a tool for a specific job: generating regular, predictable payments from existing capital without selling substance, and delivering income in sideways markets too. Anyone who has that job should know about them. Anyone who uses them should keep them under control.
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Start for freeThis article is for general information only and does not constitute investment advice. Structured products carry price risk and the default risk of the issuer. Only the term sheet and the prospectus of the respective product are authoritative.