Other ETF industry observers argue that mutual funds could be holding back due to regulatory challenges with bringing products to market, the amount of time necessary to go through the regulatory process and selective investors in the active ETF space.
Noah Hamman, CEO of AdvisorShares, describes the so-called 19b-4 approval process to list an active ETF on an exchange as “an absolute nightmare.”
There are only 61 actively managed ETFs with $14.6 billion in assets under management, compared to a total of 1,503 U.S.-listed ETFs with $1.6 trillion in assets, according to XTF. Only 12 of 90 new ETFs launched this year were actively managed, including products from BlackRock’s iShares, Cambria, AdvisorShares, WisdomTree, First Trust and State Street Global Advisors.
For more information on mutual funds and ETFs, visit our mutual funds category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.