This report celebrates the winners in the inaugural ETF Express Canadian ETF awards, held in Toronto, Canada on 22nd June, 2023. The history of ETFs in Canada stems from that very first ETF, the Toronto 35 Index Participation Units (TIPS 35) which launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange 23 years ago in 1990.
The steady growth of the ETF industry since then is well recorded and as I write this the assets of the industry are hovering around USD10 trillion spread across a wide range of types of product, from those initial index replicating vanilla ETFs, to products that are more esoteric.
Canada has here too, continued to be innovative and interesting. It might be next door to the world’s largest ETF market but the Canadian one has enjoyed a number of firsts, from that first launch in 1990 to being the first to launch a psychedelic ETF, the first crypto-asset ETFs and the world’s first covered-call ETFs.
State Street, in its recent report on active ETFs, noted Canada leads the active ETF market in terms of adoption. The firm wrote that as of March 31, active ETFs account for over 27 per cent of the overall ETF assets under management (AUM) in Canada. Canada has some of the most ETF-friendly regulations, State Street says, including the ability to launch ETFs as a share class of a mutual fund; no daily holdings requirement, and selective disclosure to a lead market maker, but not the broader marketplace.
State Street suggests that this regulatory flexibility provides managers with greater confidentiality about their strategies and options to enter the ETF market.
Assets in the Canadian market stand at USD271 billion in roughly 1346 ETFs and the firms that represent these funds were well represented in these awards and in our awards event.
Many congratulations to all our winners. Our data for ETF issuers was produced by our data partners, Trackinsight, and none of these awards are designed to be used for making investment decisions.
