Over the last five years, the company has seen its AUM skyrocket by 50 per cent per annum, while the industry at large recorded growth of 38 per cent per annum.
The momentum displayed by BetaShares is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that it took them nine years to hit their first $10 billion in AUM, whereas the acquisition of the following $10 billion was achieved in only 18 months.
In the year to date, BetaShares has secured more than 25¢ of every dollar invested into the Australian ETF space.
“We are very pleased to reach this milestone and feel honoured to have been entrusted with helping to achieve the financial objectives of so many Australians,” said BetaShares chief executive Alex Vynokur on the achievement.
“We recognise the breadth of our investor base – and are proud to assist many young Australians [to] start their wealth creation journey, while also helping more experienced investors achieve their financial goals and head into retirement with confidence, particularly during this time of uncertainty.”
Mr Vynokur is particularly proud of BetaShares’ offering that encompasses a wide range of funds covering various asset classes, geographic regions and investment themes.
“While recent flows have been strong across the board, we have seen particularly strong flows into our market-leading range of ethical ETFs, which have taken in over $900 million this year, and also into our technology funds,” he said.
“Our Nasdaq-100 ETF (NDQ), for example, has received inflows of around $500 million this year to date, and now has well over $2 billion in AUM, while our Global Sustainability Leaders ETF (ETHI) is also approaching the $2 billion mark.”
But BetaShares has more milestones to achieve as it pursues innovation, finding new means to offer investors intelligent solutions.
“Our vision for the decade ahead is to continue our development as a leading, independent Australian financial services business, offering a wide range of quality solutions to help our clients reach their financial goals,” said Mr Vynokur.
“While our growth so far has been very humbling, we still feel like we’re just getting started.”
Notably, BetaShares recognises the growing importance of millennial investors and expects their interest to remain strong. However, in looking forward Mr Vynokur opined the industry must be ready to meet the needs of local institutional investors, who are increasingly taking up ETFs as well.
“Increasing fee pressure along with the annual performance tests required under the recent Your Future, Your Super reforms are likely to encourage the continued adoption of passive investments by Australian institutional investors,” said Mr Vynokur on the future of the space.
“We expect that over time local institutions will increasingly utilise ETFs and match the high levels of ETF adoption by their overseas counterparts.”
BetaShares predicts that the total ETF industry AUM will be approximately $135 billion at the end of 2021.
This goes hand in hand with predictions from competitor VanEck, which recently stated that the industry will be worth $200 billion within two years.
