How Finfluencers can Launch Their Own Social Trading Product with Actively Managed Certificates instead
Are you a trader, financial influencer, or portfolio strategist with a successful investment strategy? The dream of setting up your own fund often fails due to high regulatory hurdles and the lack of a license? But there is a professional solution: With an exchange-traded Actively Managed Certificate (AMC), you can bring your strategy to market as a regulated investment product. The legal structure of Actively Managed Certificates is not a collective investment fund, but AMCs are issued as a structured securities whose value is linked 1:1 to a specific underlying – e.g. your model portfolio! Find out here how you can use this path for your social trading.
The Challenge: The Dream of Your Own Fund and the Regulatory Reality
Many talents in the financial industry—whether successful traders or finfluencers with a large community—face the same problem: They have developed an excellent investment strategy and want to make it accessible to investors and monetize their expertise. However, the classic way of setting up a fund is associated with enormous hurdles:
- High Costs: Setting up and managing a fund can quickly cost six-figure sums.
- Regulatory Burden: A MiFID or UCITS license is required, which is a lengthy and complex process.
- High Barriers to Entry: The management of client assets is strictly regulated.
These obstacles make it almost impossible for individuals and smaller companies to package their strategy professionally. But what if there was an infrastructure that could take care of all that for you?
The Solution: iMaps Actively Managed Certificates as Professional Social Trading Trackers
This is where Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) from iMaps Capital Markets come into play. An AMC is a structured financial instrument whose underlying portfolio is actively managed by a strategy provider. At iMaps, we summarize this category as Social Trading Trackers, as they allow you to share your strategies publicly so that others can invest in them. With iMaps Capital Markets, this concept is institutionalized: Your model portfolio becomes a regulated, exchange-traded security that is tradable for retail and professional investors on the Stuttgart Stock Exchange (EUWAX).
The iMaps approach offers decisive advantages for anyone looking to take a more professional path:
- Largest Investment Universe: Design your strategy with unparalleled flexibility. Our universe includes all financial instruments tradable via leading brokers like Interactive Brokers, Baader Bank, or Coinbase Group—including stocks, bonds, ETFs, derivatives, and even crypto tokens, which amount to well over a million financial instruments.
- Full Dividend Accrual: In contrast to many competitors who retain dividends as hidden costs, we credit all distributed dividends (net of withholding taxes) directly to the portfolio. This directly benefits your investors.
- Transparent & Cost-Optimized Execution: Portfolio reallocations are made at the best available prices on the primary exchanges. We guarantee optimal execution instead of providing quotes from monopolistic market makers.
- Higher and Fair Fee Participation: You receive 80% of the performance fees and, depending on the AuM issued, up to 80% of the management fee as well.
- Pan-European Reach: Your product is listed with international brokers like Interactive Brokers and Swissquote. This allows you to reach investors across Europe without them needing to open a separate account—a real advantage in a fragmented market.
How Does It Work?
The Clear Division of Roles in Social Trading
The model is based on a simple and clear separation of tasks.
Your Role as Signal Provider:
- You define and update your model portfolio (discretionary or systematic).
- You submit your trading signals—even intraday.
- You build your public track record.
- Most Importantly: You are the source of the investment signals and for this, you do not need your own MiFID license.
Our Role as Infrastructure Partner (iMaps Capital Markets):
- We handle the complete setup of a Segregated Portfolio as the underlying asset.
- We take over the entire issuance of the security (ETI) and ensure regulatory compliance.
- We ensure collateralization through a third-party trustee to protect investor capital.
- We are responsible for the stock exchange listing on EUWAX Stuttgart and the market making for fair liquidity.
Who Is This Social Trading Model Suitable For?
You are the perfect candidate if you:
- Run a model portfolio or an investment strategy.
- Want to build a public and verified track record.
- Wish to monetize your financial expertise.
- Are looking for a regulated and compliant way to launch your own investment product.
Setting up your own fund does not have to remain an unattainable dream.
Actively Managed Certificates offer the perfect bridge for talented strategists and finfluencers who are looking for a professional, regulated, and scalable solution. Instead of burdening yourself with complex licenses and high costs, you can focus on what you do best: developing a superior investment strategy. Use the institutional infrastructure of iMaps Capital Markets to launch your own iMaps Actively Managed Certificates
