#55 Zem Sternberg - Can Investors Get Paid to Own Insurance?

The Nalu Finance Podcast

What if the odds have flipped? Downside protection has traditionally been treated as a cost: a premium investors pay repeatedly while waiting for an event they hope never occurs. What if a structural change in the index-options market has altered that equation? My guest is Zem Sternberg, CEO of Lake Hill Capital Management, who began trading index options while studying at the University of Chicago and went on to help build a major global equity-derivatives business at Salomon Brothers.

Zem argues that the index-options market is undergoing a regime change comparable in significance to the emergence of volatility skew after 1987. The growth of covered-call, income and option-overlay strategies has created a persistent pool of natural convexity sellers. In his view, this may have shifted the structural compensation towards the investors willing and able to take the other side. This is not a forecast of the next crash, nor is it presented as an arbitrage. It is a discussion about risk transfer, changing market structure and the difficult work required to turn an attractive set of odds into a repeatable investment process.

What’s Inside:

• Positioning, not predicting. A perfect volatility forecast still wouldn't smooth out drawdowns. Zem explains why he gave up on better pricing models in favour of a different, more persistent edge.
  

• The waiting-time problem. A simple roulette wheel analogy reveals why a real structural edge can still bankrupt patience long before it pays off, and why that's what actually kills most tail-hedging programmes.
  

• Covered calls and the risk hidden by familiar language. Covered calls are sold as conservative income plays. Put-call parity tells a different story about what investors are actually holding.
  

Why Listen:

This episode is worth the time of any allocator evaluating options income or tail-hedging strategies. It challenges the assumption that owning convexity must always create negative carry, while offering a more realistic view of what converts a favourable thesis into a sustainable strategy: not merely a better model, but disciplined and repeatable implementation

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🎙️ Transcript: Zem Sternberg: 00:02You have to have the ability to adapt and implement. Having a better model isn't enough. Having a good idea isn't enough. Even recognizing this regime change isn't enough. If you can't execute, it doesn't matter.

Intro: 00:22 NALU Finance exists to broaden horizons, challenge assumptions, and spark thoughtful conversations about investing and finance. Everything you hear is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast constitutes financial, investment, legal, or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any investment. If you're making an investment decision, don't rely on a podcast, however brilliant the guests or hosts may think they are. Speak to a qualified professional who understands your personal circumstances. Compliance box ticked. Now let's listen and learn.

Zem Sternberg: 00:54 It is as significant as the shift that occurred 40 years ago between the markets pricing no Skew to the markets pricing with Skew. It's only getting stronger.

Sponsor: 01:06 This podcast is powered by vestr, the engine behind Active Management. Vestr is a Switzerland-based fintech startup that provides software for issuers of actively managed certificates to automate their value chain fully. Visit vestr, V-E-S-T-R dot com to schedule a meeting with an expert and to learn more about vestr.

Stefan Wagner: 01:28 My guest today started trading index options in 1987. He was a 21-year-old grad student at the University of Chicago, armed with little more than a clunky Apple computer and the statistics from his coursework. That was enough to catch the eye of options pioneer Blair Hull. On Hull's desk, Zem lived through the 1987 crash. He learned the lesson that has defined his entire career. Discipline is everything. From there he went to Salomon Brothers, built their equity derivatives business into a global powerhouse, and became one of the youngest managing directors in the firm's history. In 2005, Sam Sternberg founded Lakehill Capital, where he is chief executive today. Zem's whole thesis flips the usual script. Most investors treat downside protection as a cost, a tax you pay and hope you never need. Zem thinks that framing is backwards and that a regime change in the markets has quietly made it possible to be long insurance and get paid to own it. Zem, welcome.

Zem Sternberg: 02:37 Hi, nice to be here.

Stefan Wagner: 02:39 You started trading index options in the 1980s to help pay for college. You're using handheld FM radio to get live quotes from your dorm room. Take us way back to that moment. What were you seeing in the options market that your professors at Chicago were telling you was impossible?

Zem Sternberg: 02:58 Well, I was first drawn to the options and futures markets because at their core, they're all about odds and probability. And that was an interest that my father sparked in me at a very, very young age. He was a mathematics professor at Harvard, and he taught me to see the world through the lens of odds and probability. So I began trading options while I was still in college, actually, to help pay my way through school. And I would try to get quotes in the newspaper, but those were way, way, those were way delayed. So outdated, yeah. So I spent a bunch of my own money, it was a lot for me at the time, and I bought one of these devices, I think it was called a Quotrek machine. So it's basically a small little FM radio with a small little LCD screen that would display live quotes. But for me, the reception was awful. So I'd bring this little thing to class, and I'd sit next to a window, and I'd stretch the antenna out as far as I could just to pick up a signal. That's how I got started.

Stefan Wagner: 03:59 Excellent.

Zem Sternberg: 04:00 At Chicago, the culture is and still is built around one really central idea, which is reasonably correct, and that is that markets are efficient. And back then it was also well understood that markets and stock markets and commodity markets were all fat tailed, that basically extreme events happen more often than the standard statistics would suggest. Everyone knew it then, everyone knows it now. And when I was looking at option prices at different strikes, I saw something that really couldn't fit that reality. This was before the big events of 87. And volatility was basically the same across every different strike. There wasn't any concept of skew. Basically, the option markets weren't pricing what the empirical markets were saying. And I didn't understand how to reconcile the two. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't understand.

Stefan Wagner: 04:53 You brought your research on fat tails to the academic experts and to floor traders on the CBOE. What did the academics say versus what the practitioners said and who turned out to be more useful?

Zem Sternberg: 05:06 Well, I wasn't sophisticated enough at the time to invent some sort of new options model, but I did understand one simple point. If the tail risk was real, then out of the money options should have a higher implied volatility. And I couldn't fit the two. So when I talked to the professors, the response from them was basically the same, always the same. And they said, well, this is the University of Chicago. You don't understand. The market is right. The market is efficient. And the market is correct. And if something were mispriced and you discovered something, surely someone else would have found it. And thank you very much. I couldn't figure it out. So instead of arguing with them, I started buying some index ratio put spreads. That's basically something like a 1 by 10 put spread. I would buy it. It's buying 10 to sell 1. I'd buy it. It wouldn't make any money. It wouldn't lose any money. I just kept doing this. Nothing was happening. And I kept telling people, this doesn't quite look right. Now, I wasn't predicting anything. I wasn't saying anything about a crash. I wasn't doing anything about that. Well, all I was saying was the odds favor owning them. And, uh, at the time, almost no one was paying attention while no one was paying attention. There was one person who did pay attention. That was a fellow named Blair Hull. He is one of the great pioneers of the options trading business. He took me under his wing. He really gave me a great opportunity. He hired me. I joined him. And I helped him build his market-making business, working on all sorts of volatility models, pricing models, even floor trading technology. Basically, back then, we installed big monitors into the pits to flash quotes to the traders. And at the time, that was very cutting-edge. And frankly, today, looking back, Blair Hull and Thomas Petterfy, which was another and is another pioneer in the industry, they were pushing the level of innovation. And they both had a very profound influence on how I think about markets, risk, and opportunity.

Stefan Wagner: 07:16 So when October 1987 happened and you, with your 110 put ratio, what did you learn?

Zem Sternberg: 07:24 Okay, when 87 happened so long ago, okay, the position made a little bit of money. But let me tell you a small story that I don't think I've actually told anyone. I'm in school. I skip class, I go straight to the office downtown, and then I go straight down to the CBO floor. It was, um, it was a little chaotic. So I'm trying to get into the pit to help trading. And this floor official comes running over to me and he's shouting at me. He's going, Zem, Zem, Zem, I'll let you in today, but don't, don't ever do it again. And I was, I, what, what, what did I do? Did I, did I, did I forget to timestamp a ticket? Did I flash the wrong hand signal in? You got to remember this is hand signals. It's kind of like in the movie trading places. Uh, I, I, I didn't know what I did. So he comes over to me and says, you're not allowed to wear jeans and you're supposed to wear a tie.

Stefan Wagner: 08:20 That was his concern on that day.

Zem Sternberg: 08:21 That was his concern. In the middle of the world coming to an end, his overriding concern was the dress code.

Stefan Wagner: 08:27 Oh, that's excellent. Okay. So besides being yelled at, what were the things that you learned and that you still apply today?

Zem Sternberg: 08:38 Over time, There are two lessons that were burned into me. These two lessons have helped me navigate pretty much every market environment from benign to turbulent, from calm to chaotic, from 9-11 to COVID and everything in between. The two lessons are, one, stay at the frontier of technology. whether it was TV monitors or handheld devices in the pits, racks of Unix machines at Salomon Brothers, GPU clusters in a data center, cloud computing well before COVID, and now even AI and quantum. The pattern is basically the same. If you look across the most successful option firms, whether they're market makers, liquidity providers, asset managers, or even sophisticated individual traders. The one defining common factor isn't talent. It's not discipline. Those, of course, are required. The one separating factor is technology. You need to be on the forefront of technology. The second is always be alert for regime change. I don't mean trying to predict turning points in the market or macro cycles or the next fashionable theory of volatility and how to forecast it. I mean, deep structural shifts, the kind of change that happens maybe once or twice in a lifetime, but will permanently alter the odds. 87 was such a regime change. And today, the index option markets has gone through a very significant or as significant change.

Stefan Wagner: 10:27 What exactly has changed and why do you think most practitioners haven't caught on yet?

Zem Sternberg: 10:33 It is as significant as the shift that occurred 40 years ago between the markets pricing no Skew to the markets pricing with Skew. This regime started only a few years ago and it's only getting stronger. It's not a mispricing, it's not an arbitrage, but it's one of these things that happen maybe once or twice in a lifetime. The broad headline is that in general, historically, for most of the time, in the index options, the odds have favored selling options. That doesn't mean you can't buy them. That means you shouldn't buy. It doesn't mean you shouldn't buy them. It's just that in general, if you're running a business, on average, you should be selling them. But that's flipped. And I can't believe I'm telling you this. When I saw this, And my traders came to me and they showed this to me. It says, in general, the odds now favor buying. Now, again, it doesn't mean you shouldn't sell. It doesn't mean that back in the day when selling options on average is in your favor, there are plenty of people who've gone out of business selling options. And there are plenty of people who will and do go out of business buying options. I'm just saying, in general, the odds have flipped. And this is an extraordinary event. And if you're not aware of it, you'll be left behind.

Stefan Wagner: 11:55 And what caused that flip, do you think?

Zem Sternberg: 11:59 There are basically several forces. One, today, options are basically an accepted form of investment and trading. My high school son can click on a screen and trade an option. Everyone's trading them. Everyone understands them. Everyone knows how to price them. They've become much more acceptable. Second, there's been a tremendous growth in ETFs, mutual funds, asset managers who trade options. The SEC recently changed the rules for 40-act funds to use options. And what has happened is there is now a tremendous persistent and still growing pool of natural sellers of convexity. And this selling has to be absorbed by someone. And the implications for professional investors is profound. I think the academics historically have used a term, just to get a little wonky, variance risk premium. That basically describes the idea that on average, options tend to tarry rich. to compensate the seller. In my view, five to 10 years from now, the academics will come up with another term. They might call it like variance risk discount to describe the mirror image. They're basically going to say, you need to compensate the buyer to buy them. So they're going to call it variance risk discount.

Stefan Wagner: 13:22 Yeah, I mean, there are these many multiple billions of invested in ETFs and funds that were essentially basically sell option premium, or now these ETF with auto callables, called equity premium income yield enhancement, or the buffer, anything. Most investors sees these as a conservative income strategy, and these are the ones that are selling quite a bit. But you have written a little bit about that in fact, a naked short put position. Can you a little bit explain to listeners why and why that matters?

Zem Sternberg: 13:54 Let me be very clear. The growth of these products is a very positive development. Selling these options, the overriding options, all of this stuff, the put spread callers, the income, everything that you mentioned, They are doing exactly what they're designed to do, and they're great. They're great for the end investor. They're doing what they're supposed to do. I don't have any moral judgments about them. Some folks come to me and say, oh, well, you would do better with a 60-40 portfolio, or some back test would have done better. That's not the point. The point is the market for these strategies is growing. They serve a useful purpose. And it's my job to just understand that growth and how to respond to it. Now, in terms of cover call writing, here's a very simple idea. It's something that every option professional knows instinctively, but might be a little less familiar to the outside world. In options, there's a concept known as put-call-parody. It's a very simple idea. But it basically says that the payoff of a put can be replicated by a long call and short stock. This is not supposed to be a wonky theoretical podcast, but it's one of the most basic relationships in option pricing. Let me repeat that. Covered call writing is equivalent to naked short put selling. Now it's totally valid to do what you're doing. It's totally valid. It makes total sense. But most people don't appreciate that equivalence. For example, I was at a cocktail party the other day and they said, oh, you're in options. And I go, yeah. And they go, oh, I trade options. He's telling me. I go, what do you do? He says, well, I do a lot of covered call writing. So I took a step back and I go, oh, that's great. So you're short puts. And he recoiled backwards and said, no, no, no, I would never do that. But economically, that's exactly what he's doing.

Stefan Wagner: 15:59 Yeah, exactly.

Zem Sternberg: 16:00 I need to be very clear. I'm not criticizing either side. Buying or selling puts or calls can make total sense. The point is simply, in our industry, in the options industry, taking the other side of these call selling programs, I can convert them into a put equivalent. And because of the extreme selling that's going on, and that has continued to going on, because they're accepted, because they do a good job, for me, they are transferring risk to me, risk that they don't want. So that's why there's been this huge regime change.

Stefan Wagner: 16:35 I mean, I always try to have this conversation as well when we talk to investors and it's like, yes, you sold an option and you think, oh, I sold it too cheap because realized volatility that happened or the implied volatility was actually different. The volatility is not why you made money. You took a directional view where the world is going in most of these trades. And even if the volatility is different than what the option was priced, it didn't mean you left money on the table. You make money because of directional.

Zem Sternberg: 17:05 Often when people ask me what I do for a living and I say I'm in the options business, their eyes just instantly glaze over. So I want to try not to get this too wonky, but in response to what you just said, someone can sell a call. The market goes down. They make money on, let's say, their call selling. I can buy that same call at the same time. And I hedge it by shorting stock. And the market goes down. We both have the opposite trade on in the exact same call in the exact same time. And we can both make money at the same time. No one is right or wrong here. We're both accomplishing our objectives.

Stefan Wagner: 17:49 It's not necessarily a zero-sum game.

Zem Sternberg: 17:52 It is not, and I need to hammer this home. Often people will say, oh my gosh, these people, look at the growth, they're doing something wrong. It's not wrong, it's fantastic. And it has created, I cannot overstate this, a regime change which is as significant as the shift from no-skew to skew. And this is why we call it a regime change. If you're unaware of it, what will happen is strategies that used to work may suddenly start to bleed out. You wouldn't notice it right away. And strategies that never worked will suddenly start to work. So my point here is this isn't like we're predicting the market, we think the market's going up or down, or there's going to be a crash. We're pointing out is that there has been a structural regime change in the index ops market.

Stefan Wagner: 18:43 Following up a little bit on the prediction side, so many traders and sort of managers, especially in the option business, spend a lot of time and effort on volatility predicting models, GARCH and other things, or talk about some unique mispricing they take advantage. What are your thoughts on this?

Zem Sternberg: 19:02 Many traders and managers spend an enormous effort trying to forecast volatility, identify mispricings. You hear about a whole bunch of different models, GARCH models, AI models, high-frequency data, even quantum computing. Now, we use some of those tools ourselves, which are supported by a team of mathematicians, statisticians, and engineering folks who are constantly refining them. But a couple of years ago, we started asking a different question. Let's assume something extreme. Suppose we received a message from the future. Suppose we knew with absolute certainty, we had an AI, we were omniscient. We knew with absolute certainty that, for example, a two-month option trading at an implied volatility of, say, 15, we know for sure it should be trading at 18. Actually, you could data mine it and look forward, and you know for sure. Actually, more simply, what if you bought an option for $5 and you knew for sure that it was worth $7? You had a perfect $2 edge. What does that actually mean? It doesn't mean you buy it for $5 and it instantly goes to $7. If you buy for five, you might make 10 bucks on it. You might make 20 bucks on it. You might make 50 cents. You might lose 50 cents. You might lose your entire premium. It means that that perfect knowledge only reveals itself through repetition. And that leads to something more deep. Even if you had a perfect forecast, options trading demands patience, scale, discipline, and you have to do the trade over and over again. Many folks can test this at home. They'll see, sure, having a perfect forecast in the option volatility space will improve, but you're still gonna have lots of drawdowns, lots of variability, lots of uncertainty all along the way. And that tells me a couple of things. It gives me a sense of a limit to how good my forecast could be, because it can't be better than a perfect forecast. So I can get a sense for how much effort I should put into this field. because I know what it would look like if I was perfect. You stop chasing the perfect model and you start asking a far more important question. Where does the edge actually come from? And how do I build a process that captures it reliably? Because the surprising part is this, even with perfect knowledge, you still experience all these strings of gains and losses and significant volatility. So at this point, when we talk about pricing models, it's 2026. It's very hard to argue that there's some sort of material mispricing in the S&Ps that's left to exploit. That doesn't mean there's no edge. That doesn't mean that the source of the edge doesn't exist, but the edge is risk transfer. Risk transfer still exists. There is a continuous structural demand for people who want protection, convexity, or balance sheet relief. And there are others who are willing to provide it. That flow doesn't disappear. It doesn't get arbitraged away in the same way as a pricing error would. It persists. And that leads to reframing the problem. It's not predicting better, it's positioning better.

Stefan Wagner: 22:27 Yeah, finding the edge. So if nearly everyone in the market is selling options, as we discussed with all the ETFs and other billions and overriding funds, someone has to be buying them. You already touched on it. This sort of creates a structural opportunity. But you also have said just buying cheap put is not the answer. Why not?

Zem Sternberg: 22:51 Imagine you're running a tail hedging program. Imagine that you're buying puts at a discount. Imagine that you're buying them incredibly cheap. The thing is, you have to execute that trade over and over again before it finally pays off. All the while, you're absorbing theta decay and drag, you're bleeding. So the question isn't, to me, not whether it can work, The real question is, how long should you reasonably expect to wait, even with favorable odds? This is not based on a market view. It's not based on timing skill. It's just based on the nature itself. Here, let me give you a simple analogy. Think of a roulette wheel. 18 red, 18 black, one green. Imagine that for whatever reason, the odds are mispriced and you have a real edge betting on green. The thing is, there's still a 97% chance that you lose, 18 red, 18 black, one green. So it doesn't matter if the payoff is a million dollars, a hundred million dollars, or a billion dollars. Here's the catch, 97% of the time you lose. So imagine you play once a month, kind of like trading a one month option. You play once, you lose, 97% chance. You play again, no memory, you lose. Month after month after month, you're still likely to lose. Of course, you could get lucky and have green four times out of 10. You could also not have green ever in 200 months. But how long should you reasonably expect to wait before a green will show up, irrespective of the payoff? That's what a low probability put looks like. It's not about crashes. It's not about timing. It's about what is the realistic, time horizon for this edge to materialize. Because if you don't understand that going in, you won't be able to stay in the trade long enough. And the uncomfortable truth is, in most cases, it will take longer than almost anyone expects or can tolerate. Now, obviously, markets are far more complex than roulette wheels, obviously. But the analogy forces us into the right Discipline. If you're going to enter a tail hedge, you need a clear and honest answer to one question. How long am I prepared to lose before I win? I don't have the stomach for that kind of bleed, and I don't have the stomach for that kind of weight, even at great odds. I have colleagues who run tail risk funds, and I say this with real respect. They may be doing everything totally right. They may be telling you the benefits of these programs, which are well known, but almost no investor can tolerate the waiting and the bleed. even if the odds are in your favor. At some point, the investment committee starts to question the program, the pressure builds, and you know how the whole thing ends. And for us, for me, it's just not sustainable.

Stefan Wagner: 25:58 Insuring the black swan event, as it is famously called, you have to see it as an insurance and being willing to pay it for the whole, as long as you're in the market.

Zem Sternberg: 26:08 But how long? How long? So people often talk to me about how beneficial it is. Correct. They talk to me about how great they are at doing it. Correct. They're talking to me about how their pricing models are telling them they're buying cheap options. Correct. But that's not the problem. The problem is how long. And this is actually where the recent regime change becomes really important. Not only does it change the odds, because historically, to get around the problem of the bleed is people would enter into these complex trades. They would do these ratio spreads, funding trades, one by threes, time spreads, or the multi-asset, they'll buy one product, sell gold, buy S&P. They do all these things in order to get the bleed down. But the regime change flips everything. The regime change flips everything. All these complicated trades for me, in my experience, they can work, they might still work. Again, I'm not digging anyone. It's just for me, it means a lot more things can also go wrong. And the regime change has made it possible. This is going to sound incredible, is that you are now, we are now long insurance and paid to own it. Let that sink in.

Stefan Wagner: 27:26 Maybe you can go a little bit deeper into that one, maybe double click on this, because that is the perfect dream scenario, the jack of all trades, basically.

Zem Sternberg: 27:35 It doesn't mean it's easy. Everyone comes into my office and says, show me the formula. Give me the fancy formula. Tell me how I say to them, you know what? Everyone knows how roulette works. Everyone knows the odds. I could give you a roulette wheel, go ahead and turn it into a successful business. There's 20 casinos on the Las Vegas Strip and only one or two are persistently successful.

Stefan Wagner: 27:59 And yet they all have the exact same… And they can even ban the people from their market when they're too successful for them.

Zem Sternberg: 28:07 Yeah, so the point here is that with the right technology and the right systems, And the right approach, the technology being you're interacting electronically with the markets, you know how to roll your positions around. If you do it correctly and you know for sure that the odds are in your favor, you have a business that is positive drift and long insurance. It's one of the most remarkable things. And I want to make sure everyone understands that you understand. It's not a mispricing. It's not an ARB. This is what they teach us in school about risk transfer. Remember the classes on futures trading? Well, the commodity speculator is absorbing risk from the hedger. They both win. That's what's going on here. If you are selling options, that can be a great thing. That can be a great thing. It can be very profitable. It can be very profitable, and you should do it.

Stefan Wagner: 29:01 Final question. You started by trying to pull live quotes into a dorm room with a handheld FM radio. You went on to build one of the largest optional trading desks at Salomon Brothers, and today you run an asset management business operating at the highest level. Through all of that, you have stayed focused on index options. So what's the through line and what actually matters?

Zem Sternberg: 29:23 That means I started trading index options in college and I haven't been able to graduate. There needs to be a core structural edge and it's not necessarily a mispricing edge. Those are competed away. You have to have the ability to adapt and implement. Having a better model isn't enough. Having a good idea isn't enough. Even recognizing this regime change isn't enough. If you can't execute, it doesn't matter. We brought together an extraordinary team, an extraordinary team of technologists, heads of derivatives at major banks, heads of options at other major banks, and I brought them together, and it's not by accident, because capturing the edge at this level requires an exceptional execution across every part of the system. We are aligned not with ourselves, but also with our investing partners, aligned in philosophy, aligned in expectations, and aligned in how we define success, which to us is very simple. Try to make money, try not to lose, and because of this regime change, always be ready and positioned to capitalize when things become chaotic.

Stefan Wagner: 30:41 I'm always fascinated when I speak to people like you who are so focused and in-depth in what they're doing, have been doing for a while, but there's so much information about it out there, you know, the way how you found or your team found the regime change. How do you sort of structure your information diet in a world where, you know, more and more data and information and whatever videos and everything else and everybody's on social media? How do you sort of deal with that information diet for yourself?

Zem Sternberg: 31:11 When it comes to the broad information diet, I really try to limit myself to focus on one thing and one thing only. How do I stay competitive in one space and be on top of it? Because there are people who are always competing with you, always trying to understand what you're doing, I try not to read the news because the machines might pick it up. I try not to look at anything that's not relevant to what I do.

Stefan Wagner: 31:46 But I assume you're still reading and so my question to you would be what's your favorite finance book and why?

Zem Sternberg: 31:53 For most people who are novices to the world, I would recommend a random walk down Wall Street. I just think it's a good basic understanding of what's going on in the world. Beyond that, I would probably read, this is what I try to tell my kids. I try to read a lot of history and think of it as case studies. Not like they try to teach us in school, which is rote memorization, but more like, huh, something happened to this person. How did they deal with it? That I think helps people prepare for investing and trading in general. That's what I would recommend.

Stefan Wagner: 32:29 Perfect. Thank you very much, Sam. That was very insightful. Thank you, Stefan. If you would like more in-depth information or to get in contact with the Lakehill team, go to www.lakehillgroup.com.

Zem Sternberg: 32:47 Nalu FM finance podcast. Insights into the financial markets.

SPEAKER_01: 32:57 This podcast is powered by vestr, the engine behind Active Management. vestr is a Switzerland-based fintech startup that provides software for issuers of actively managed certificates to automate their value chain fully. Visit vestr, V-E-S-T-R dot com to schedule a meeting with an expert and to learn more about vestr.