BlackRock plans to lower the management fees charged by some of its core-strategy ETFs before the end of the year, chief executive Larry Fink said Monday.
Fink hinted the largest ETF manager might cut expense ratios during the company’s quarterly earnings call in July. [Will BlackRock Cut iShares ETF Fees?]
Some analysts had also predicted the move due to iShares losing ETF market share to Vanguard, particularly in funds designed to track broad asset classes. [Bernstein Research: iShares May Cut Fees on Select ETFs]
“We expect to be announcing a new strategy in how we’ll be addressing the fee issue related to these large, liquid, core-type of ETFs,” the BlackRock CEO said Monday at the Barclays Financial Services Conference. “We’re going to be addressing that in the next quarter, probably the early part of the fourth quarter.”
The changes will only apply to some ETFs with lower-fee competition and will not be a “wholesale fee change on everything,” Fink told attendees, according to a Reuters report.
In the latest BlackRock quarterly earnings call, Fink acknowledged the company’s ETF arm iShares was losing market share to low-cost competitors in some products but said the firm had a plan to bolster inflows. “Without going into much detail we believe we have a plan to address it over the coming months,” he said in July.
On Monday, the BlackRock CEO said the firm is the most excited about the opportunities in ETFs since it acquired the iShares business from Barclays.
“We think there are huge opportunities on the retail side and there’s continual growth on the institutional side,” Fink said.
He added the firm sees structuring ETFs on behalf of its clients as another growth driver.