Strategic Use of ETFs By Pension Funds Will Grow, Says Research

New research by BlackRock claims that pension funds will increase their strategic use of ETFs, and that the instruments will become a bigger part of pensions’ investment portfolios.

From Investments and Pensions Europe:

For “certain investors and certain portfolio usages”, ETFs might represent a cheaper route to access equity indices, suggest the authors. Pension funds are among the clients that iShares says are buying into the trend of moving away from futures as the traditional instrument of choice for institutional investors looking for beta and towards ETFs.

“Pension funds are very big passive investors and a number have concluded that ETFs are a better way to access beta than the increasingly expensive futures route,” says Ursula Marchioni, head of equity strategy and ETP research at iShares EMEA.

[…]

Pension funds have, of course, been known to use ETFs tactically, to ensure continued exposure while in the throes of transition management, for instance, but Marchioni predicts that strategic use will also increase.

“Approximately 65% of US pension funds already declare they use ETFs for strategic investment, buying and holding for two years or more,” she says, citing Greenwich Associates research (figure 1).

Read the research here.