ETFs are a democratic investment product, says Deborah Fuhr, managing partner and founder of ETFGI. She told the ‘Trends in the ETF industry ETFGI Research’ session at the ‘ETFGI Global ETFs Insights Summit Canada’ that the same product term is used by the retail sector, financial advisors, asset managers, and hedge funds. Canada has the distinction of launching the first ETF 33 years ago. They also grew to $1 trillion in assets in 18 years, whereas it took mutual funds 66 years to reach that mark. They have seen inflows for 41 consecutive months, regardless of the market environment. No other product can say that, she said. One of the key drivers is that over time people realized if they wanted to invest across markets, they couldn’t with active management. Instead, they look for alpha where they can find it and use ETFs to capture their performance at a low cost. Currently, in the U.S. and Europe, they are regulated for the retail markets, but over 50 per cent of their assets are held by institutional investors including pension funds
- PWC