Sabrina Principi, Head of Business Development for ETFs & Index Solutions Southern Europe at BNP Paribas Asset Management explains to Romain Thomas why her firm has entered into a partnership with online trading platform, Directa SIM.
Q: What was the driver behind this partnership with Directa SIM?
A: The partnership with Directa SIM confirms our strategy aimed at offering investors, through our wide range of ETFs, further pieces to build asset allocation
Q: Why did you choose this trading platform?
A: Directa SIM is a leading online trading platform in Italy, offering a wide range of financial services to its clients. This agreement will allow us to reach more investors – above all retail investors – by making our solutions available, without trading costs, to its clients.
Directa has a long history in the field of trading online in Italy, dating back to 1995; it’s an innovative player, paying due attention to accessibility and transparency of information in carrying out its service of reception and transmission of orders: it is therefore, in our opinion, a perfect fit for us.
Q: How is the ETF business growing for BNP Paribas Asset Management in Italy?
A: We are extremely pleased by our commercial growth of our index business in Italy where clients recognise our strong sustainable expertise. Italy brought a significant contribution to the growth of our assets that reached EUR47 billion globally at the end of November. These extremely good results demonstrate the soundness of our strategy, which, from the very beginning, aimed at positioning us as a key player in sustainable and thematic ETFs. We were pioneers in this field with the launch of the first Low Carbon ETF in 2008 and continued along the path with the first ETF dedicated to the circular economy in 2019 and many other specialised products, focusing on themes like blue economy, hydrogen, etc.
Q: Is there an increase in appetite for ETFs across Southern Europe?
A: I would say the growth in interest for indexed products has steadily grown in recent years, alongside with the innovation in the field. 2023 has been the year of fixed income, in the ETF space as well as for active products. With the gradual rise in interest rates, we have seen a lot of interest on all our solutions and in particular on the ESG government strategies of the euro area and short- to medium-term corporate SRI bonds, which together raised more than EUR1.5 million.
Q: What new products will you be producing?
A: In line with our focus on sustainability, we are currently working on a new range of offer which will enable us to better incorporate our ESG philosophy and integration in the passive space. This is all I can say at this stage, we will be able to disclose more soon.
Q: What distribution methods are you using to distribute your ETFs?
A: As of today, institutional investors (as pension schemes), portfolio managers and fund buyers/selectors (insurance companies, private banks, fund of funds managers, etc.) account for most of our assets under distribution. But the market is changing: retail distribution – either via networks or platforms like Directa – is gaining momentum, and we are paying more and more attention to this.
