ETF Trends Editor Tom Lydon speaks with Vanguard’s Senior Investment Strategist, Joel Dickson, about the firm’s decision to change benchmarks at 22 of its index funds, including ETFs.
The asset manager said it plans to transition six international stock index funds to FTSE benchmarks and 16 U.S. stock and balanced index funds to new benchmarks developed by the University of Chicago’s Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP). The funds had been tracking benchmarks provided by MSCI (NYSE: MSCI).
Dickson says Vanguard didn’t make the move lightly. [Vanguard Changing ETF Indices]
“We’ve been looking at this for several years,” the Vanguard executive tells Lydon. “Over time, a larger and larger percentage of the expense ratio of ETFs has come in the form of index licensing fees.”