This newsletter comes to you from Tokyo where the team are celebrating the winners in our inaugural Japanese ETF awards, held at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
I took a moment to sit with Bloomberg’s Ji Zhuang at the Bloomberg offices in Tokyo this week where he outlined the extraordinary growth of appetite for ETFs across Asia. China and Japan vie for the position of largest in terms of ETF assets but hard on their heels comes Taiwan, with its USD200 billion in ETFs based on organic growth and high retail demand.
Demand for active ETFs is high across APAC, often delivered through government supported savings plans such as the NISA in Japan.
Active ETFs are the stand out phenomenon of 2025 for the ETF industry. Our interview this week is with Matt Barry of Touchstone Investments who tells us that active ETFs have dominated flows this year with some USD245 billion year to date, one third of all ETF inflows, flowing into the strategy.
Barry believes that the arrival of the ETF as a share class will also push the strength of active.
“Going back, active ETFs were a much smaller piece of the universe. Historically our clients have accessed their active strategies in the mutual fund vehicle and so there is a huge pool of assets out there. What we are seeing is that with the emergence of active ETFs, they are searching for those same types of strategies with the tax efficiency and lower cost profile of the ETF vehicle.”
This week also brings you our monthly crypto column, penned by Joshua de Vos and supported by CoinDesk and Trackinsight. Crypto demand across APAC in August, saw USD70.4 million in net inflows, with incremental gains led by Hong Kong and Australia.
De Vos writes that digital asset investment products recorded USD4.88 billion in net inflows in August, down from USD13.14 billion in July. The step-down in totals came alongside a modest improvement in market breadth, setting a more measured tone for the start of Q3, he says.
Voting is open in our US awards for both ETF service providers and asset managers in the US. Place your votes now, using this link.
Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor
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