In this video, Helen Hayes, Head of iShares Canada and Doug Coulter, President RBC Global Asset Management discuss drivers of ETF growth and adoption among Canadian financial advisors and investors.

We’ve seen exceptional growth across all categories of ETFs over the past few years, but I’ll focus on a key trend - the evolution in the users of ETFs.

Initially, ETFs were developed to provide institutional investors with a liquid, single-solution vehicle to access very specific markets.

Over time, due to advancements in solution sets and technology, individual investors and advisors have increasingly looked at ETFs as a key building block of an efficient, modern portfolio.

Looking to the last few years specifically, although we’ve seen the use of ETFs increase significantly in the Canadian advisors channel, we’ve also seen the rapid rise in direct to investor channels, and robo-advisors.

A key reason ETF usage continues to accelerate is that ETFs have become an essential building block of portfolios.

ETF gives you access, liquidity, and cost competitive solutions. What you have is more and more investors understanding the benefits of ETFs.

However, ETF penetration of the total equity and bond market and by client segment is still very low. We expect generational shifts to unlock new growth. 

We believe our product breadth, client reach and investment engine will generate diversified revenue growth. 

We are investing in innovation - in our ability to manage scale and complexity across our investment engine and to connect it to the rest of the ETF and indexing ecosystem. 

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