By Valérie Baudson, managing director of exchange-traded funds at Amundi – As the award-winner of the Best Fixed Income ETF Manager by etfexpress, Amundi is very proud to be recognised for its expertise in fixed income ETFs, which now comprises 24 products. Amongst the European universe, we are one of the few issuers to offer investors a consistent and innovative fixed income ETF range at a competitive price.
We started in late 2009 to build our fixed income offering with a series of ETFs on Eurozone Govies, enabling investors to access a wide range of maturities from three months to 15 years, and thus to choose a position on the whole interest rate curve. We also launched a product on inflation, offering the possibility to hedge against inflationary risk, as well as a product on European Corporates, to get diversified on European corporate bonds
In 2010, our fixed income offering became ‘smarter’: we created 15 products, including 3 ETFs on US Treasury Bonds, and completed by short ETFs on the same maturities. We also reinforced our Eurozone offer with six short Euro Govies products. Later in the year, one of our main innovations was embodied by two complementary products on AAA and ex-AAA Eurozone government bonds. Finally, we launched in December 2010 an ETF on Emerging markets debt. With frequent innovation and a consistent fixed income range, Amundi ETF has gained greater recognition from investors in this field.
In Europe, the ETF market has shown a huge increase in terms of asset under management in the past few years. Concerning the fixed income offering, European investors have had access to many new products since late 2009, and Amundi ETF has participated in this development. As the European market is mainly driven by institutional investors, fixed income ETFs have gained the status of asset allocation tools in their own right, bringing transparency, cost-efficiency and liquidity.
Our product offering is a wide one, with 96 trackers on the main asset classes: 67 equity products, four in commodities, one in money market and 24 in fixed income. Many of these products were unprecedented on the market at launch date. For instance, we were the very first provider to make accessible two ranges of short ETFs on US Treasuries and Eurozone Govies, thanks to which investors are able to short their positions in a context of low interest rates.
It is worth mentioning that our fixed income range is consistent with our low-cost policy: our products are 25% cheaper on average than our competitors. As an example, our ETF on Global Emerging Debt – offered at a TER (Total Expense Ratio) of 0.30% – is more than 30% cheaper than our competitors, offered in average with a TER of 0.45%.
Innovation has been one of our major growth drivers in 2010, and there is still room for more. In 2011, we will continue to explore new opportunities without betraying the pillars of ETFs: simplicity, transparency and cost-efficiency. Our expansion in Europe, supported by the quality, the cost and the consistency of our products, will be the strong pillar of our development, with the aim of being part of the European ETF issuers Top 5 by 2012.
Please download a copy of the special report from here: etfexpress Awards 2011
