Half of professional investors have replaced active funds with ETFs

Equity ETFs also remain popular

A majority (51%) of investors have replaced active mutual funds with ETFs in their portfolios, citing liquidity and total cost of ownership as the most important criteria when selecting the passive products, according to the inaugural TrackInsight Global ETF survey.

A further 82% use exchange-traded funds, which celebrate their 20th anniversary in Europe this year, to replace direct investing in equities, but 87% of respondents said they have never used ETFs to take a short position. The debut survey from TrackInsight spoke with more than 300 professional investors from 17 countries across EMEA, the Americas and Asia Pacific with an exposure of $277bn to ETF assets, roughly 5% of the global total. Respondents included asset managers, financial advisers, investment consultants, family offices, insurance firms, pension funds and banks, with over ha...