Vanguard wins ETF flow war as State Street slips further behind

[NEW YORK] There's a new champion in the battle for bragging rights atop the US$5.3 trillion exchange-traded fund (ETF) industry, while a familiar laggard is seeing its slice of the US market shrink toward a record low.

Vanguard Group is on track to beat BlackRock in attracting ETF flows for the first time since 2013, with a record of US$194 billion so far in 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The world's largest asset manager lured US$113 billion, while State Street Corp was a distant third place, with US$32 billion. The Boston-based firm's market share is poised to drop for a fifth straight year after a US$29 billion exodus from its crown jewel - the US$324 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker SPY).

In a year that saw a pandemic send shockwaves through global financial markets, Vanguard and BlackRock have vaulted ahead of rivals in luring cash for their ETFs. Both asset managers were helped in part by their popularity with financial advisers and their presence in model portfolios, which bundle funds into ready-made strategies.

State Street hasn't seen the same level of success given that fees are relatively high on some of its top funds, according to CFRA Research's Todd Rosenbluth.

While SPY is among the most-profitable products partly due to its expense ratio of 0.095 per cent, BlackRock's US$234 billion iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and the US$174 billion Vanguard S&P 500 ETF each charge only 0.03 per cent.

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"As more retail and wealth management investors have joined the ETF market, State Street has missed out on a good chunk of those inflows," said Mr Rosenbluth, CFRA's head of mutual fund and ETF research. "They were late to bring pricing down for products that are used as building blocks of investor portfolios."

But flows alone don't tell the complete story of State Street's funds this year, according to Matt Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas Research. SPY is the most actively traded ETF - a status it cemented in 2020.

"We saw a significant increase in trading volume through the year, particularly in periods of volatility," Mr Bartolini said. "Investors gravitated towards our suite when they needed liquidity the most."

Another highlight of the year was the booming demand for leveraged and niche products. The Ark Innovation ETF (ticker ARKK) has become the largest actively managed fund, with Cathie Wood's firm posting year-to-date inflows of US$18.8 billion. Smaller issuers such as ProShares, First Trust and Direxion have also climbed the ranks.

"You are certainly continuing to see innovation coming from smaller issuers," said Jillian DelSignore, principal at Lakefront Advisory. "You have these clusters of the industry that are nipping at the heels of the much larger issuers."

Vanguard's intake has been boosted by the conversion of some of its mutual-fund clients to lower-cost ETF shares, transactions that totalled US$37 billion through the end of November, according to a Vanguard spokesperson.

The steady inflows into those funds showcase the buy-and-hold ethos of the typical Vanguard investor - financial advisers and wealth managers, according to Citigroup's Scott Chronert. While BlackRock is also popular with that investor set, its ETFs - which tend to be highly liquid - are often used as trading tools, the analyst said.

"When investors wanted to easily and conveniently access market opportunities anywhere in the world, they turned to iShares," according to a BlackRock spokesperson. Those funds "have repeatedly demonstrated their versatility and resilience this year", she said.

For several analysts, it's still unclear whether the gap between the top two ETFs and the rest of the pack will continue to widen in 2021. Bloomberg News reported earlier this month that State Street was exploring options for its asset-management business - including a merger with a competitor - to gain scale, according to people familiar with the matter. A State Street representative declined to comment on the article.

"The pie is growing and State Street is getting some of the slices," Mr Rosenbluth said. "That can be appealing to a smaller ETF provider or a firm that has been on the outside looking to break into the ETF market."

BLOOMBERG