The goal of Fideuram’s D-X ETF platform is ‘not to compete with the big players’, according to Renato Zaffuto (pictured), head of investment solutions at Fideuram Asset Management, a subsidiary of private banking giant Intesa Sanpaolo.
The group is the largest wealth manager in Italy, managing more than €350bn in assets, with more than 6,000 financial advisors and relationship managers.
Discretionary portfolios and funds-of-funds are the core offering, using a mixture of passive and active vehicles to construct multi-asset solutions.
Prior to launching the D-X ETF platform, Fideuram used internal index-tracking mutual funds, a market it entered three years ago, as well as third-party ETFs for beta exposure.
It is now switching those assets, where appropriate, into the six new core ETFs – three equity, three fixed income – a process it expects to complete in November
Given the group’s scale – Zafutto described Fideuram as “one of the biggest users of ETFs in the market” – the new funds have amassed around $2.2bn in assets under management (AUM) in just six weeks.
As to why the firm chose to launch its own ETFs, Zaffuto explained that in some core asset classes it believes it can do the ETFs directly.
“We also believe in ESG and sustainable investing, so all our ETFs use ESG indices. We want exposure to ESG and Article 8 with a robust process in terms of cost,” he added.
While Fideuram does intend to distribute the new ETFs through its digital platforms as well as the open market, Zaffuto said the objective is “not to compete with the big players”, but to use the ETFs as building blocks for the firm’s global multi-asset portfolios.
“It’s likely that at some point in the future, we can enlarge the range of this block, but we think that we wanted to consolidate the range at this stage,” he said.
