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Rachel Aguirre, head of U.S. iShares Product at BlackRock, said BIDD’s shareholder base and holdings aligned with the ETF wrapper, and that the firm has “seen a shift in investor preferences demonstrated by flows into active ETFs compared to active mutual funds.”
On Friday, annual net inflows into US ETFs crossed a new high, hitting $913 billion this year, higher than 2021’s record $910 billion influx, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
BlackRock — which has been the largest ETF issuer for more than two decades — has pulled over $223 billion into its U.S. ETFs this year. It’s home to roughly $3.15 trillion in US ETF assets and about $350 million mutual fund assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In October, BlackRock filed with the SEC to create exchange-traded fund share classes of its mutual funds, a design that would port the tax advantages of the ETF wrapper onto its billions of existing mutual fund assets.
Aguirre said BlackRock plans to do more ETF conversions “when it makes sense for the strategy, the existing shareholder base, and where we see client demand.”
However, she added, mutual funds “continue to play a critical role” for the asset manager, such as in “retirement channels due to client preferences.”
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