Ten years after the financial crisis, a London-based provider of passive products is testing whether the trading strategy of selling default protection has appeal beyond a rare group of institutional debt investors according to Bloomberg. The UK company, Tabula Investment Management, listed an exchange-traded fund on Sept. 7 that tracks a gauge of credit default swaps on European corporate bonds, joining only a handful of ETFs that offer similar exposure. And for the privilege of pretending one is the reincarnation of AIG Financial Products, Tabula will charge an annual fee of 0.5%.

Allowing ordinary investors to join sophisticated hedge funds while bypassing the need for a burdensome ISDA agreement, the Tabula European Performance Credit UCITS ETF (ticker TCEP) works very much how a regular CDS does: it provides a long position in the region's credit markets by selling protection against default on a group of investment-grade and high-yield companies.