Online wrap Novia has seen exchange traded fund business jump 70 per cent per cent since last June, with its chief executive calling out other platforms that do not offer ETFs to investors and advisers.
Speaking to FTAdviser, Bill Vasilieff said that while ETF assets on the platform have now reached the £100m mark, this is still relatively low.
He blamed that on some of the larger fund supermarkets trying to “muddy the waters” around ETFs by branding them “risky” and stating that there was a lack of demand from advisers and clients.
A Cofunds spokesperson stated that they do not currently offer ETFs on the platform.
“An increasing number of our clients are telling us they’d like to see not-so-mainstream investments on Cofunds, but the overall demand remains small.
“These types of investments are in the planning mix for future development, but we have no timescales to confirm as yet.”
Old Mutual also said that they have no immediate plans for ETFs as demand is lower than for fund based solutions such as Spectrum, Cirilium, Generation and WealthSelect.
“We are looking at expanding the range of investments on the platform, but we don’t have any firm timescales yet for ETFs.”
Fidelity’s Fundsnetwork previously told FTAdviser that it offers a selection of 50 physically-backed ETFs from iShares, ETF Securities and HSBC.
“We are significantly enhancing our platform capability, which will include the addition of ETFs,” a spokesman stated. “We have not seen a huge demand for ETF products via the platform to date, but we believe that they can play an important part in the financial planning and investment process for many advisers.”
Novia’s in-house discretionary fund manager Copia, which currently holds over 70 per cent of its assets in ETFs, is also seeing growth, up by 72 per cent over the last six months and 379 per cent over the last 12 months.
Evrin Erdem, head of investment at Copia Capital Management, commented that the use of passives such as ETFs in the model portfolios enables access more specific targeted markets, sectors and asset classes than the use of trackers alone would allow. “This is not available via a standardised tracker fund.”
Mr Vasilieff said that those that do not offer ETFs are mostly platforms that were built to deal with unit trusts and open ended investment companies, but have not updated their systems to deal with daily or live pricing.
David Ferguson, founder and chief executive at Nucleus, previously told FTAdviser that they are probably slipping behind in a number of technology areas and ETFs might be a second or third-order issue.
“While all platforms should offer access to ETFs, I’d be delighted for them to continue to fail to deliver,” he added.
peter.walker@ft.com
