Northern Trust (NasdaqGS: NTRS) Executive Vice President and head of funds and managed accounts Shundrawn Thomas joined ETF Trends Publisher Tom Lydon at the Morningstar ETF Conference in Chicago to discuss FlexShares’ use of non-traditional indices for its growing lineup of exchange traded funds.
Northern Trust is the parent company of FlexShares. Thomas notes that most ETF providers opt for established indices and build a new ETF product around those indices. However, in recent years, there has been more deliberate engagement around the development of indices for use with ETFs, according to Thomas.
Thomas said that of the 15 index-based FlexShares ETFs, all 15 track a newly created, non-traditional index. FlexShares itself develops and tests new indices, then works with an index provider to bring the index to life for use with an ETF.
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