ETF Express Newsletter 04.04.25

The rise of retail in Europe

I heard an interesting stat this week that one in five Europeans now owns an ETF. That rise has been partly driven by the huge growth in robo-advisers and neobrokers, a subject that we will be covering in one of my ETF panels at this year’s IMPower Fund Forum.
Savings plans, investing in ETFs, are proving hugely popular across Europe. The phenomenon might be related to the fact that we haven’t had a major market correction in some time so performance has been easy, but if that happens we now have active ETFs which should come into their own and protect or even achieve performance for their investors, despite markets being down.
This week brought news that the mighty active and alternative manager GQG is bringing its US equity strategy to investors through its first ETF. "We have demonstrated our ability to deliver a US equity strategy through various investment vehicles and look forward to launching an ETF using the same strategy," says CIO Rajiv Jain. "While we recognise the competitiveness of the US equity ETF marketplace, we believe our concentrated, forward-looking approach to investing could be a differentiator for investors."
Not a robo-adviser, or a neobroker, but a wealth manager using ETFs was featured this week in our interview with Netwealth that has seen its assets, which are predominantly in ETF portfolios, sail past the GBP1 billion mark.
Iain Barnes, CIO of Netwealth, explained that the self-described ‘hybrid’ wealth manager, has achieved organic compound annual growth of 40 per cent in AUM since launch in 2016.
Founded by Charlotte Ransom and Thomas Salter, the firm targets affluent and high net worth clients with a minimum portfolio requirement of GBP50,000 and average portfolio sizes of GBP446, 000. Fees for average clients, including financial planning advice, are 1.25 per cent.
Today is the last day for nominating ETF service providers in the Canadian ETF Express awards and next week sees us opening the voting stage for both ETF service providers and issuers, with data provided by Trackinsight. The awards this year are to be hosted by The Toronto Stock Exchange and will take place on 29th May. Good luck to everyone.
If you want to attend IMPower Fund Forum and that panel on robo-advisers and neobrokers plus a whole lot more, I can offer offer readers a 10% discount using this code: FKN3972SPK, and this link.

Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor
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