Desjardins Group is offering its investor members a brand new product as of June 11, the Natural Resource Guaranteed Investment (NRGI).

The NRGI, whose capital is 100% guaranteed at maturity, will be especially attractive to caisse members who want to participate in the very strong growth of the international natural resource market brought about by the vigorous economic development in emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The product will offer investors access to crude oil (30%), natural gas (10%), aluminum (15%) and copper (15%), as well as nickel (7.5%), zinc (7.5%), gold (5%) and an index (10%) composed of 8 underlying commodities: corn, wheat, soybean, sugar, red wheat, cotton, coffee and cocoa.

The NRGI offers very good return potential. If, at maturity, the yield is between 0 and 30%, members would receive a 30% return. For yields higher than 30%, for example 55%, members would receive the actual return achieved. Finally, even if the index were to post a negative performance over a period of 5 years between 0% and -15%, members would still receive a positive return.

“This new product, with its groundbreaking design, is part of an already impressive range of guaranteed capital structured products. It will help Desjardins in its savings development efforts across Canada,” stated Bernard Fortin, director of wealth management at Desjardins, in a release.

“There are very few guaranteed capital structured products in the financial industry that offer such diversified access to the natural resources sector, which is generally reserved for institutional investors,” stated Eric Landry, director, financial engineering at Desjardins. “One of the advantages of the Natural Resource Guaranteed Investment is that it makes these markets available to members who want to increase their portfolio diversification by taking part in the growth of emerging countries, as well as to those interested in having a wide range of underlying commodities to reduce their portfolio’s volatility.”