Amundi and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) have climbed past other ETF issuers in 2024 after booking strong momentum across inflows, fee revenue and new launches, according the annual ETF Issuer Power Rankings now in its second year. 

The research, covering asset managers representing a combined $2.23trn of AUM produced by ETF commentators, ETF Stream, in conjunction with ETF analytics company, ETF Book, found the French and US asset managers ranked among the top five ETF issuers in Europe.

This was based on proprietary methodology which measured four metrics over a 12-month period:

• Asset gathering – absolute and relative flows in 2024
• Revenue – absolute revenues from fees and revenue per ETF
• Activity – the number of ETP launches and Europe firsts
• Theme presence – absolute flows across nine asset classes; equities, fixed income, commodities, ESG, emerging markets, thematics, sectors, actives and factors

The ETF Issuer Power Rankings is a data-driven assessment of the top 25 ETF issuers in Europe and their performance on a relative and absolute basis during the 2024 calendar year.

Third-placed Amundi scored highest on ‘theme presence’, positioning among the top three for several product categories and among the top five inflowing issuers in all categories bar one – the outlier being thematics where it booked $805m outflows.

The firm also leapt from eighth to second year-on-year in ‘activity’ after debuting 37 new products and surged higher in ‘asset gathering’ after inflows more than doubled from $12.1bn in 2023 to $30.4bn in 2024.

SSGA broke into the top five, up from thirteenth position in 2023, after almost quadrupling inflows year-on-year to $26.9bn, while more than doubling its new launch count.

DWS once again claimed pole position, with a more considered approach to new launches offset by $39bn inflows, up from $22.5bn in 2023, with much of this traction entering higher-fee non-core exposures including the Xtrackers S&P 500 Equal Weight UCITS ETF (XDEW).

Rounding out the top five, BlackRock retained second position after a prolific year of launches – adding 76 new strategies.

The defining narrative of 2024 was a breakout moment for active ETFs. Taking centre stage was JP Morgan Asset Management, whose market share of the $55.5bn* segment exceeded 56% by the end of the year.

Europe’s nascent active story has seen established managers including Janus Henderson, Robeco and American Century Investments enter UCITS ETFs. With Jupiter Asset Management arriving early this year – and Schroders, Nordea and Dimensional Fund Advisors eyeing routes to market – the active ETF opportunity appears set to drive product innovation.

At the other end of the spectrum, Legal & General Investment Management and Ossiam both dropped more than 10 positions apiece year-on-year, as both reduced the cadence of new launched and booked more than $2bn outflows.

Jamie Gordon, editor of ETF Stream, commented: “Fund selectors often favour a select few issuers with established brands and operating at considerable scale.

“The ETF Issuer Power Rankings is designed to showcase the dynamic nature of Europe’s ETF market and the asset managers delivering timely product innovation.”

Pawel Janus, co-founder and head of analytics at ETFbook, which provided the data for the research, added: “European ETFs have grown significantly, with increases in assets, new ETF issuers entering the market, product launches and increasing adoption by a diverse base of buy-side customers.

"In response to this expansion, ETF issuers must constantly evolve, specialise and bring their best capabilities to the fore.

"The ETF Issuer Power Rankings is a useful metric for the buy-side community in the ever-evolving European ETF market."