Published date: 27th May 2025 | Author: Tom Bailey
Active ETFs are on the rise, challenging old assumptions. Discover why more investors are choosing this transparent, liquid, tax-efficient fund structure to access active strategies.
If someone tells you their investment portfolio is mostly made up of ETFs, what does that tell you about their approach to investing? Until recently, the obvious conclusion would be that they’re a passive investor – someone who prefers gaining exposure to broad market indices such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 or MSCI World.
That assumption wouldn’t have been far off the mark. Over the past three decades, ETFs have, mistakenly, become shorthand for passive investing. The world’s biggest ETF tracks the S&P 500. Broad, index-tracking ETFs dominate the inflow tables. But that association is starting to fray.
There’s nothing about the ETF wrapper that confines it to passively tracking an index. It can house any strategy – including active ones. And increasingly, it does.
The United States is leading the charge on this front. Currently, active ETFs account for almost 10% of all assets under management (AUM) within the US. In the UK, we’re still at the early stages. But signs of change are emerging. In recent years, big name asset managers, such as Jupiter Asset Management and Guiness Global Investors, have started offering their active strategies in the ETF wrapper. Looking at Europe as a whole, last year, the AUM of actively managed ETFs jumped by 68%.
Why now? For fund houses, this is about distribution. It makes sense to offer strategies across multiple wrappers – OEICs, investment trusts, and now ETFs. As the ETF wrapper becomes more familiar, particularly with younger investors, the logic is clear: meet the investor where they are.
We believe investors increasingly favour owning their active strategies through the ETF wrapper. There are several reasons for this.
First the ability to buy an ETF on a stock exchange throughout the trading day. There aren’t many products where customers are expected to agree to buy without knowing the exact price at the time of purchase. But this is common with mutual funds. When you place an order for a mutual fund on a platform, you typically receive the end-of-day price for the units in the fund, rather than the price at the moment you submitted your order.
In contrast, ETFs are traded live on a stock exchange. This means that when you buy an ETF through your platform, you transact at the current market price, providing greater transparency and immediacy. In an on-demand world, the mutual fund structure seems outdated and cumbersome.
Investors are often drawn to the transparency ETFs offer. Unlike mutual funds, ETFs have traditionally disclosed their holdings daily, giving investors clear insight into what they own. While regulators are now easing this requirement, if the UK and Europe follow recent developments in the U.S., many asset managers are still likely to maintain full daily disclosure.
For many ETFs, there’s also a tax benefit. It’s different from the tax advantage that ETFs enjoy in the US, but still important. The majority of London-listed ETFs are domiciled in Ireland, allowing them to pay lower withholding tax on dividends from US shares – typically 15% instead of 30%. Many mutual funds don’t get this benefit. Over time, this tax efficiency can make a real difference to returns, especially for ETFs with a lot of US equity exposure.
So, in a few years’ time, someone telling you they invest in ETFs won’t really tell you much about whether they are an active or passive investor. Saying you’re an ETF investor will simply mean you prefer a more transparent, liquid, tax-efficient way of accessing the market. The ETF, we believe, will become the default fund structure for most investors.
At HANetf, we’re building the UK’s most diverse line-up of truly active ETFs. No closet trackers or “shy active”. Rather, we are creating bold, differentiated actively-managed strategies – from thematic plays in healthcare and clean energy, to global and regional fixed income to high-conviction core equity – all within the ETF wrapper.
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