Vanguard’s five new low-cost exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which were just launched last month in the UK, are experiencing healthy investor demand and interest from both individual and institutional investors, says Nick Blake, head of Vanguard’s investment products and distribution.
“One thing investors look very closely at for ETFs is the ... bid-ask spread. But with ours we’ve been very pleased with the way that our spreads have tightened, which is a sign of the demand for the product and the competitiveness of the product,” says Blake.
The investment management firm Vanguard launched the new ETFs on the London Stock Exchange on 23 May 2012, after making a name for itself in the US by offering a wide variety of extremely low-cost fund and ETF options. The asset management giant first began offering a selection of funds in the UK in 2009, but had never offered ETFs.
Blake says Vanguard thought it was time to start offering ETFs in the UK because the market was relatively uncompetitive, with many investment management firms charging fees that were creeping higher.
“Everyone is becoming more cost-focused now... We’ve come in very competitive on price,” he says.
But don’t expect a price war amongst ETF providers to start up anytime soon, says Morningstar’s ETF analyst Gordon Rose.
“The products launched in the UK are considerably cheaper than comparable products from well-established ETF providers,” says Rose. “However, it is unlikely that this entrance will start a pricing war in Europe anytime soon. First of all, Vanguard is still relatively unknown on this side of the pond and should therefore struggle to gain size quickly to be a real threat to other providers, such as market leader iShares, in the short-term ... However, going forward the entrance of Vanguard could start a very interesting development in the ETF-space in Europe over the mid- to long-term.”
The most popular ETF right now out of the five new Vanguard products is the FTSE 100 ETF (VUKE), says Blake. This ETF has a total expense ratio (TER) of just 0.1%. Uptake by individual investors of this specific ETF has been really strong, he says.
The other four ETFs now trading in London are:
- FTSE All-World ETF (VWRL) – TER: 0.25%
- FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VFEM) – TER: 0.45%
- S&P 500 ETF (VUSA) – TER: 0.09%
- UK Government Bonds ETF (VGOV) – TER: 0.12%
Currently, the average TER across all Vanguard’s funds around the world is just 0.21%, says Blake.