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Structured products

Structured products · Defending investors

Structured products: have your case reviewed

You subscribed to a structured product through a bank, a wealth-management adviser or a life-insurance policy — and the valuation has fallen sharply.

You are seeing a steep drop in valuation, you fear a loss at maturity, or you have already suffered a substantial loss. A loss is not always a mere market hazard: it may also reveal unsuitable advice.

Have my case reviewed First review free and confidential

The review starts with the documents you already hold; there is no need to have assembled a complete file.

01

Do you have a case?

Vermeille & Co analyses the conditions in which your product was recommended, sold and monitored, in order to determine whether the professional involved in recommending, distributing or structuring the product may be held liable. A review may be useful in particular in the following situations:

A structured product (Phoenix, Athena, autocall, decrement product, indexed on a single share or an index) was recommended to you by a private bank, a wealth-management adviser or an insurer — often within a unit-linked life-insurance policy.
You are seeing a sharp fall in valuation, a protection barrier that has been breached, or a loss already realised.
The product did not really match your profile or your objectives (a search for security, investment horizon, risk tolerance).
The information you received before subscribing was incomplete or hard to understand: the real risk of loss, fees, the decrement mechanism, the nature of the underlying.
Your investment is relatively recent, or you only became aware of the problem recently.

A doubt about your structured product? Have it reviewed.

Have my case reviewed
02

What we examine

Our analysis combines financial-markets law, a financial analysis of the product and a critical reading of the contractual documentation. In particular, we examine:

  • Your profile and the suitability of the product to your situation and objectives.
  • The information provided before subscription: the risk of capital loss, the actual term, performance scenarios.
  • The fees and the margin built into the structure, and their effect on the return actually paid.
  • The nature of the underlying: a single share, a decrement index, a decrement calculated « in points ».
  • The monitoring of the product and the management of any conflicts of interest by the distributor.
03

Why act now

Limitation periods

Actions are in principle time-barred after five years, running not from subscription but from the day you knew — or ought to have known — the facts enabling you to act. For unit-linked life insurance, the starting point may depend in particular on the surrender, on actual knowledge of the loss or on the disclosure of the alleged breaches; it must be assessed case by case.

Preserving the documents

Gather your documents now: profile questionnaire, suitability statement, KID, brochure, statements and correspondence.

A valuation is not a final loss

A severely depressed market valuation does not prejudge the outcome at maturity; the earlier a case is reviewed, the more options remain open.

04

Submit my case

Your information is processed confidentially, solely for the purpose of reviewing your situation, in accordance with the GDPR. Privacy Policy.
The first eligibility review is free and confidential. It does not constitute full legal advice and does not prejudge acceptance of the engagement. An in-depth review of the file is subject to a prior fee agreement, in accordance with the rules applicable to the legal profession.

Going further

Understanding, and recent decisions

What recent decisions and sanctions show

Courts and supervisory authorities are examining the failings of intermediaries who market complex financial products to non-professional investors. Several recent decisions illustrate this.

Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (Paris Civil Court), 16 April 2026 — Leonteq structured products (EMTNs). On account of the breaches found by the court, Leonteq was ordered to compensate several investors for their capital loss, on EMTNs held within life-insurance policies. Other claims were dismissed, however, notably on grounds of limitation, and the insurance companies that distributed the policies were not ordered to pay. This judgment, handed down at first instance, may be appealed.

Paris Court of Appeal, 16 December 2024 (Pôle 5, chamber 10, no. 22/12454). A private-banking institution was held liable for breaching its duties of information and advice, after recommending to its client securities unsuited to her objective of cautious management. The case concerned bonds, not a structured product in the strict sense, but the reasoning on the duty to advise is transposable: the harm was compensated on the basis of the loss of a chance to avoid the risk (€70,133 in damages).

AMF Enforcement Committee, 19 June 2023 — Banque CIC Sud-Ouest (SAN-2023-09). The AMF imposed a financial penalty of €250,000, together with a non-anonymous publication for five years, for several breaches relating to the assessment of suitability, the formalisation of suitability statements and the marketing of financial instruments unsuited to certain client profiles. This decision, disciplinary in nature, illustrates the regulator's attention to the suitability obligations borne by distributors.

These decisions cannot be applied mechanically to every situation and do not prejudge the outcome of any individual case. They do, however, outline a body of litigation that has taken shape around grounds that are now well identified.

Understanding structured products and their risks

A structured product is neither a share nor a classic bond: its value depends on a formula, on one or more underlyings, on protection barriers and on fees. A few mechanisms, often insufficiently explained at the time of subscription, concentrate most of the risk.

  • A capped gain against a substantial risk of loss. The coupon is known and limited; below the protection barrier, the capital loss can be substantial, even total.
  • Fees and a margin that are hard to see. On top of the fees shown in the KID, a margin may be built into the very structure of the product, reducing the return actually paid without always appearing clearly.
  • The « in points » decrement. A fixed amount is deducted each year from the level of the reference index; if the index falls, this deduction weighs proportionally more and more heavily and accelerates the breach of the barrier.
  • An underlying reduced to a single share. A product backed by a single security concentrates the risk on the fortunes of one company and its dividend, whereas an index or a basket spreads the exposure.

None of these mechanisms is in itself improper. But where they were not clearly explained, or where the product did not match your profile, the quality of the information and advice may be open to question.

A recent illustration: products indexed on a single share. According to press estimates based on market data, between €2 billion and €2.5 billion is reported to have been invested, in 2023 and 2024, in products backed by a single listed security — the Stellantis share, the manufacturer itself not being in question — most often through life insurance. The sharp fall in the share, combined with a decrement mechanism, led to a marked drop in the value of these products. For holders, a market valuation that is very depressed today does not, on its own, prejudge the final loss, which depends on the characteristics of each product and on the performance of the underlying through to maturity.

The market and the regulator's view. According to the mapping published in April 2025 by the joint AMF-ACPR unit, gross retail inflows into structured products rose from around €23 billion in 2021 to nearly €42 billion in 2023, more than 80% through life insurance. At the end of 2023, these products represented around €57 billion, close to 11% of unit-linked assets. Decrement indices accounted for a little over a third of the assets, with the AMF and the ACPR flagging that the prevalence of decrements calculated « in points » is a point of attention. In January 2026, a study by a working group of the AMF's advisory committees put forward avenues for improving the clarity of fees, performance simulations and the explanation of the decrement.

The firm

The firm acts in cases where legal analysis alone is not enough: one must understand the financial formula, the built-in fees, the underlying, the contractual documentation and the marketing process.

Vermeille & Co is a Paris law firm founded in 2017, dedicated to defending investors — individuals, family offices, asset managers and French and international funds. It takes care to avoid structural conflicts of interest with the financial intermediaries likely to be called into question.

Sophie Vermeille (founding partner), a graduate of Paris-Panthéon-Assas (Magistère Juriste d'Affaires, DJCE) and King's College London (LL.M.), teaches in the Master 2 in Financial Law at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Jens Waldner (partner), a graduate of Paris-Panthéon-Assas (DJCE), has particular experience in the financial and insurance sectors and has been involved in several administrative investigations by the AMF and the ACPR.

The firm is regularly cited by Le Monde, Les Échos, Le Figaro, L'Agefi, La Lettre, Challenges and the Financial Times on major French financial-litigation matters. Learn more about the team.