Nikko Asset Management (Nikko AM) has been voted the Best Asia Pacific Equity ETF Manager for the ninth time in ten years in a survey conducted by ETF Express, a digital news publisher serving institutional investors and investment advisers.
“We are honoured by this recognition, which is a reflection that increasingly investors are looking for efficient exposure to Japanese equity and other yield producing asset classes. There are many ETF products but our clients appreciate the high quality of our ETFs that have lower tracking errors compared to our competitors and correlate very closely with the indices. Our fees are low as well,” says Koei Imai, Joint Global Head of ETF Business.
Nikko AM is the second largest ETF provider in Asia and in tenth position globally. The Firm’s ETF assets under management (AUM) surpassed JPY 6.8 trillion in December 2018, driven by over JPY 1 trillion of inflows over the course of 2018. Nikko AM is also one of the few investment managers that can provide a full range of ETF products across all major assets classes in Japan – Japanese equities, foreign equities, Japanese REITs and foreign REITs.
In 2018, the Firm listed the Nikko AM SGD Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF in addition to its Japan domiciled Listed Index Fund US Equity (S&P500) Currency Hedge ETF.
Imai reports that 2019 will be a year of new launches for Nikko AM. “The one challenge for all investors now is that they want yield, so we continue to see a strong interest in our J-REIT ETF. Institutional investors also remain interested in our TOPIX ETF.”
ETF Express surveys the best ETF managers in their respective asset classes, recognising managers based on product innovation, performance, consistency, expert knowledge and transparency. Results are centred on a peer review system that sees investors, managers, advisers and distributors, and other industry participants nominate winners for each category. Firms are then subject to a final review by the ETF Express editorial team before the winners are named.
