Etf, from devil to holy water for management companies' strategies

Long gone are the days when ETFs were publicly demonised by the entire chain of the asset management industry, from product houses to mutual fund distributors. How many times in the course of this first quarter of a century have we documented in the pages of Plus24 (a personal finance weekly on newsstands every Saturday with Il Sole 24 Ore) the reluctance of banks to offer them to savers, even when it was the customers themselves who went into the branch to request them? And how many alarms have been raised - and punctually relaunched - on the systemic risks of ETFs? And yet, if for years they were regarded as the devil to be exorcised, now ETFs are gradually beginning to represent the holy water for the strategies of investment houses, which are launching proprietary ETF platforms to defend margins and remain competitive in the market.

Along with the countless international mutual fund management companies, there are now several Italian companies that are among the issuers of Etf listed on Piazza Affari. Instruments designed primarily for inclusion in the portfolios of group asset management products (mutual funds, asset management and policies). And the tricolour groups in the space of a few months have shifted billions of euro that were previously invested in passive instruments of third-party houses to their own Etf. Fineco (Fam Etf), Fideuram (D-X Etf) and Eurizon (YourIndex Etf) were the main protagonists of this transfer. This strategy helps the management house to better control the value chain and retain commissions that would otherwise benefit third-party issuers.

But while companies have only recently 'discovered' the benefits of ETFs, their managers have long been among the main users. In fact, one need only scroll through the list of securities in the portfolios of actively managed funds to see the names of ETFs that allow exposure to certain markets in a single transaction. A practice that has always been the best seal of quality for an instrument that has contributed to bringing healthy competition to the financial sector and democratising the investment world. It is therefore the managers of mutual funds, but also of pension funds and policies, who are the first to benefit from the efficiency and cheapness of ETFs.

But analysing the data that Assoreti publishes each month, the use of Etf is spreading not only among managers, but gradually also among financial advisors and private banking networks, which are integrating them more and more into both their advisory (advisory) and managed (discretionary) portfolios: in the last year (data as at the end of March 2026), the companies belonging to the trade association have placed as many as 5.8 billion Etc and Etf. A momentous turning point.