SIMON Expands Digital Wealth Management Platform to Include Exchange Traded Funds; Launches New Marketplace with Innovator’s Defined Outcome ETFs

Distributed by Business Wire
12th October 2020

Innovator Capital Management’s Defined Outcome ETFs, including their Buffer ETFs, are now available on SIMON’s centralized platform for risk-managed solutions

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#ETFs–SIMON Markets LLC (“SIMON”) today announced it has expanded its digital platform to deliver financial professionals access to exchange traded funds (“ETFs”), launching its ETF Marketplace with the Buffer ETFs from Innovator Capital Management (“Innovator”). Innovator’s Buffer ETFs are part of their Defined Outcome ETFs family and are the first ETFs that seek to offer exposure to the upside performance of major market indices with known levels of downside buffers. Buffer ETFs seek to offer downside risk management features over predetermined outcome periods in a similar fashion to other risk-managed solutions on the SIMON platform. In direct strategic alignment with the missions of both firms, financial professionals using SIMON will now be able to explore adding the attractive attributes these products can bring to a client’s portfolio—with the depth of analytics they have come to expect from the platform and a simplified, end-to-end lifecycle experience.

“With a focus on delivering clarity around their products, Innovator has worked to build the awareness and market for defined outcome investments. Investors can benefit from the efficiency and transparency of the ETF structure, together with the risk management features that these products can offer. SIMON is excited to extend the technology we’ve built for risk-managed solutions to this class of ETFs, and about what this means for the broader investment options the professionals on our platform will now have access to,” commented Timur Kocaoglu, Chief Operating Officer of SIMON.

Bruce Bond, Co-Founder & CEO of Innovator, said: “SIMON is a market leading digital platform that helps advisors to better understand our products throughout their lifecycle. By creating the Defined Outcome ETF market, our goal has always been to bring revolutionary funds to the market that improve the investing landscape by providing more certainty in financial outcomes. Partnering with SIMON is a natural next step for us that will provide us the opportunity to accelerate product education and market adoption across its existing network of firms.”

SIMON specializes in an innovative, modern approach to education and analytics for structured investment, insurance, and ETF solutions, delivering end-to-end education, marketplace, and lifecycle management so professionals can help clients accomplish their life and legacy goals. The integration with Innovator simplifies workflows for professionals incorporating defined outcome ETFs into client portfolios.

About SIMON

An award-winning fintech company, SIMON is committed to transforming the digital experience for financial professionals, enabling them to better serve their clients. SIMON’s intelligent and innovative platform delivers an end-to-end digital suite of tools to more than 30,000 financial professionals, who serve more than $3 trillion in assets, empowering them with on-demand education, an intuitive marketplace, real-time analytics, and lifecycle management. With a focus on reshaping the advisor experience, SIMON is setting new industry standards, simplifying the complex, and delivering structured investment and insurance solutions—and now defined outcome ETFs too—to investment professionals, centralized within one unique ecosystem.

For more information about SIMON, visit www.simon.io and follow the company on LinkedIn. Securities products and services offered by SIMON Markets LLC, a broker-dealer registered with the SEC, Member FINRA / SIPC. Annuities and insurance services provided by SIMON Annuities and Insurance Services LLC.

About Innovator Capital Management, LLC

Awarded ETF.com’s “ETF Issuer of the Year – 2019”, Innovator Capital Management LLC (Innovator) is an SEC-registered investment advisor (RIA) based in Wheaton, IL. Formed in 2014, the firm is currently headed by ETF visionaries Bruce Bond and John Southard, founders of one of the largest ETF providers in the world. Bond and Southard reentered the asset management industry to bring to market first-of-their-kind investment opportunities, including the Defined Outcome ETFs™, products that they felt would change the investing landscape and bring more certainty to the financial planning process. The Defined Outcome ETFs™ family consists of Buffer ETFs™, Bond ETFs, and Stacker ETFs™. Buffer and Bond ETFs™ seek to provide investors structured exposures to broad equity and bond markets, where the upside growth potential, buffer against the downside, and outcome period are all known, prior to investing. Stacker ETFs™ are the world’s first ETFs to offer a multiple or “stacked” exposure to two or three benchmark index ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IWM) to a cap, with only downside exposure to the SPY over a one year outcome period. Having launched the first Defined Outcome ETFs™ in 2018 — the flagship Innovator S&P 500 Buffer ETF™ Suite — Innovator has allowed advisors to construct diversified portfolios with built-in buffers as tool to aid in risk management.

Built on a foundation of innovation and driven by a commitment to help investors better control their financial outcomes, Innovator is Leading the Defined Outcome ETF Revolution™. For additional information, visit www.innovatoretfs.com.

The Funds have characteristics unlike many other traditional investment products and may not be suitable for all investors. For more information regarding whether an investment in the Fund is right for you, please see “Investor Suitability” in the prospectus.

Investing involves risks. Loss of principal is possible. The Funds face numerous market trading risks, including active markets risk, authorized participation concentration risk, buffered loss risk, cap change risk, capped upside return risk, correlation risk, liquidity risk, management risk, market maker risk, market risk, non-diversification risk, operation risk, options risk, trading issues risk, upside participation risk and valuation risk. For a detail list of fund risks see the prospectus.

The outcomes that the Fund seeks to provide may only be realized if you are holding shares on the first day of the Outcome Period and continue to hold them on the last day of the Outcome Period, approximately one year. There is no guarantee that the Outcomes for an Outcome Period will be realized or that the Fund will achieve its investment objective.

Fund shareholders are subject to an upside return cap that represents the maximum percentage return an investor can achieve from an investment in the funds’ for the Outcome Period, before fees and expenses. If the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has increased in value to a level near to the Cap, an investor purchasing at that price has little or no ability to achieve gains but remains vulnerable to downside risks. Additionally, the Cap may rise or fall from one Outcome Period to the next. The Cap, and the Fund’s position relative to it, should be considered before investing in the Fund. The Funds’ website, www.innovatoretfs.com, provides important Fund information as well information relating to the potential outcomes of an investment in a Fund on a daily basis.

The Defined Outcome Funds that include a buffer objective only seek to provide shareholders that hold shares for the entire Outcome Period with their respective buffer level against Index losses during the Outcome Period. You will bear all Index losses exceeding the buffer. Depending upon market conditions at the time of purchase, a shareholder that purchases shares after the Outcome Period has begun may also lose their entire investment. For instance, if the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has decreased in value beyond the pre-determined buffer, an investor purchasing shares at that price may not benefit from the buffer. Similarly, if the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has increased in value, an investor purchasing shares at that price may not benefit from the buffer until the Fund’s value has decreased to its value at the commencement of the Outcome Period.

The ETF Issuer of the Year is awarded to the ETF sponsor that has done the most to improve investor outcomes through product introductions, product performance, fund management, asset gathering, investor support and innovation in 2019. ETF.com’s editorial team chose the finalists and then the ETF.com. Awards Selection Committee, an independent panel comprised of fifteen of the ETF industry’s leading analysts, consultants and investors, decided the winners. Other finalists for ETF Issuer of the Year – 2019 included iShares by BlackRock, Vanguard, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Global X.

The Funds’ investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses should be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus contains this and other important information, and it may be obtained at innovatoretfs.com. Read it carefully before investing.

Innovator ETFs are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC.