Assets under management in the European ETF (exchange traded fund) industry increased over the course of 2023 to reach a new all-time high of €1.563 trillion, according to LSEG Lipper.
ETF promoters in Europe enjoyed estimated net inflows of €155.6 billion.
The majority of assets in the European ETF industry — €1.119 trillion — were held by ETFs assigned to article 6 of the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.
Detlef Glow, Head of Lipper EMEA Research, LSEG, wrote: “At a closer look, the increase in assets under management of €321.0 bn for 2023 was driven by the performance of the underlying markets (+€165.4 bn), while the estimated net inflows contributed (+€155.6 bn) to the increase in assets under management.
“As for the overall structure of the European ETF industry, it was not surprising equity funds (€1,127.8 bn) held the majority of assets, followed by bond funds (€369.0 bn), commodities products (€32.3 bn), money market products (€23.9 bn), alternatives products (€6.8 bn), and mixed-assets funds (€3.8 bn).”
Glow predicts that assets in the European ETF industry will increase to more than €2.5 trillion before the end of 2030.
The largest ETF promoter in Europe — iShares with €709.4 billion — accounted for 45.37% of the overall assets under management, far ahead of the number two promoter Amundi ETF with €207.4 billion and the number three promoter Xtrackers with €162.3 billion.
“The European ETF industry has written a true success story since its inception in the year 2000,” wrote Glow.
“Nevertheless, I expect that the European ETF industry will continue to grow on an above average rate compared to the overall fund industry in Europe.
“The future growth will be driven by numerous factors from a wider adoption of ETFs by all kinds of investors to product innovations and everything in between.
“Even after the strong growth of the European ETF industry over the course of 2023, I won’t change my prediction from 2022 that the assets in the European ETF industry will increase to more than €2.5 tr before the end of 2030.
“This estimated applies an annual growth rate of 8.00%, which may sound a bit conservative, but since the growth of the assets under management is also depending on the conditions in the securities markets, this might be a fair assumption since a bear market can offset the growth in assets under management of several years in a quite short time period.”