The exchange-traded fund market has shown a huge increase in terms of assets under management in recent years, even during the particularly tough market environment of 2008, when the global m
The exchange-traded fund market has shown a huge increase in terms of assets under management in recent years, even during the particularly tough market environment of 2008, when the global mutual fund industry suffered substantial redemptions. At Amundi ETF, we believe that this impressive growth is likely to last as many investors found that ETFs meet their requirements in terms of transparency, cost-efficiency and liquidity.
We decided to launch our ETF business two years ago in very tense market conditions. Our strategy in 2009 was focused on developing a large range of products while offering investors competitive prices (low management fees and tight spreads), quality products and constant innovation. After one year of development and with a presence only in France, we more than doubled our assets under management and registered one of the fastest growth rates in Europe in terms of market share.
The Amundi ETF range today comprises 78 ETFs covering the main asset classes, equities, fixed income, money market and commodities. Since 2009, we have been strategically increasing our product range with new product listings around every three months on NYSE Euronext Paris.
Since the beginning of 2010, we have started multi-listing our products on various stock exchanges across Europe including Deutsche Börse and Borsa Italiana. This marks another significant step in Amundi ETF’s development strategy and will help us achieve our ambitious target of becoming one of the five biggest players in Europe with more than EUR10bn in assets under management by 2012.
Innovation has been one of our main drivers in addition to our very competitive pricing policy. For example, we recently launched an innovative range of short government ETFs that has indisputably met with client interest. Without exploring niche or complex areas, we believe that there is still room for innovation and we intend to carry on developing our product offering to reach up to 100 ETFs by the end of 2010.
It is also worth mentioning that the way we build and manage our products is also a competitive edge as we can rely on the good credit rating of the Crédit Agricole Group, which is the swap counterparty of all our equity ETFs.
The equity portion of the Amundi ETF range comprises 58 products that offer investors multiple tools for their asset allocation. Along with plain vanilla regional, country or style-based ETFs, the range also includes 13 products tracking global and European sector indices, five short equity ETFs and four leveraged equity ETFs.
Many of these products were unique to the market at the time they were launched. For instance, we were the first provider to launch ETFs tracking the MSCI World Financial and MSCI World Energy indices.
Valérie Baudson is managing director of exchange-traded funds at Amundi Investment Solutions
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