Capital Group, Goldman, T. Rowe Hit ETF Milestones
Some of the biggest companies in the ETF business haven’t been in the game for very long but are quickly gathering assets.
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That didn’t take too long.
Several major asset managers are crossing asset milestones in their ETF businesses amid a record year for inflows industrywide. Capital Group’s three-year-old line of ETFs just hit a total of $100 billion in assets under management. Of course, no one comes close to BlackRock’s iShares or Vanguard, which at $3.9 trillion and $3.7 trillion are the dominant players in the market. But the rising profile of Capital Group, and other semi-recent entrants like T. Rowe Price, highlights the demand for new exchange-traded funds — and actively managed ones in particular.
“We didn’t have them for a long time,” said John Queen, fixed income portfolio manager at Capital Group. “Even when active [ETFs] became available, we wanted to really make sure we understood the details of how they were going to play out and what the transparency meant before we started them up.”
Wind in the Sales
About $1.1 trillion poured into US ETFs this year through October, which was more than in all of 2024. Of that, $378 billion went into active ETFs. Total assets are now more than $13 trillion. Some of the other firms that recently surpassed or are about to hit assets-under-management milestones:
- Invesco is nearly at $800 billion across its 240 US ETFs, according to data from VettaFi.
- Goldman Sachs crossed over the $50 billion mark among its 45 US ETFs.
- T. Rowe Price now has more than $20 billion in its line of 24 ETFs.
Model Behavior. As niche ETF issuers have flooded the market with leveraged and thematic new funds, Capital Group and many other big asset managers have kept a focus on core-style products. To help distribute those ETFs, firms have increasingly added model portfolios. The top area where they’re building out models is now in active ETFs, according to a recent report from Morningstar. As of March, when Capital Group launched its first active ETF model portfolios, the firm was the third-largest provider, at $61 billion in assets under management, behind Wilshire ($68 billion) and BlackRock ($168 billion).
“It has been an incredibly important connection with our clients and advisors, because it’s what they wanted all the time,” Queen said of Capital Group’s model portfolios and funds of funds. “It’s been a huge and important growth area for us.”
