It’s the question every manager asks before they sign, even if they don’t say it directly: “What happens to my product, and my investors’ money, if the issuer goes under?”
It’s a fair question. Structured notes issued by banks are usually senior unsecured debt. When the issuer fails, the noteholder gets in line with every other creditor and hopes for the best. That’s the arrangement that turned Lehman Brothers’ structured notes into a well-documented case study in what “unsecured” actually means when it counts.
iMaps was built to answer that question before it gets asked.
How the protection actually works:
- Your ETI is linked to a Segregated Portfolio, a legally separate cell within iMaps’ own segregated portfolio company structure in the Cayman Islands. Each Segregated Portfolio’s assets and liabilities are ring-fenced from every other Segregated Portfolio in the structure, so another manager’s strategy has no claim on yours. That Segregated Portfolio holds the actual account at the broker (Interactive Brokers, Vantage, Coinbase Prime or Baader Bank).
- Those underlying assets are pledged, under a Programme Security Trust Deed, to Collateral Services PTC, an independent, regulated private trust company that sits inside CSC Global, not iMaps. That pledge is what the term sheets mean when they list “Credit Risk of the Issuer: Insured (collateralisation).”
- iMaps is audited annually and the Delegated Investment Manager holds direct Power of Attorney and full visibility into the broker account, so nobody has to wait for a report to know the assets are actually there (alternatively, we have a Signal Provider setting).
- The whole structure operates under a Base Prospectus approved by the FMA (Liechtenstein’s Financial Market Authority). The ETIs are also registered on the public register of ESMA (the European Securities and Markets Authority): the EU-level body that oversees securities markets across the bloc. They’re listed on the Stuttgart Stock Exchange (EUWAX), the largest exchange-based segment for structured investment products in Europe.
The track record behind the structure
Since launch, iMaps has issued over EUR 1 billion across 200+ issuances, and that number keeps growing every day.
The bottom line
Your assets are held in a Segregated Portfolio, pledged to an independent trustee under a formal security deed, audited annually, and visible to your Delegated Investment Manager. That structure is in place before an issuer failure is ever a live question.
Sources
iMaps Security Overview (collateral structure, CSC Global, auditing, power of attorney), the White Label ETI term sheet (Stuttgart EUWAX, Collateralised, Retail Public Offering) for the “Insured (collateralisation)” designation, the 2026 iMaps ETI AG Base Prospectus (Programme Security section 2.4, on ranking and shortfall treatment), boerse-stuttgart.de for the EUWAX market-segment claim, and iMaps’ internal issuance figures (EUR 1bn+ issued, 200+ issuances)
