Active Muni ETFs Could Help Investors Better Access Income Opportunities

The Municipal Bond ETF is not much different from FLMI, but it invests in muni securities with a longer maturity of five to 15 years and only holds securities rated in one of the top four ratings categories.

“Franklin Templeton has been doing munis for over 40 years – you know seventy billion dollars of assets, so it’s a real strength of the firm, lots of desire to have it in the ETF wrapper, leverages a lot of that active expertise,” Mann said.

Franklin Templeton’s James Conn and Chris Sperry will both be on the management team for both ETFs while Daniel Workman will also work on FLMI and Nicholas Bucklin will also work on FLMB.

“We think for active where there’s, you know, almost a million municipal bonds, a lot of indices are very restrained in terms of what they can own,” Mann said. “We’re not going to go through those same type of restrictions.”

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