The global industry for exchange traded funds and products attracted further inflows during November, beating the level seen in the same period a year ago.

Exchange traded funds and exchange trade products gathered a record $319.4 billion in net new assets as of the end of November, 15 per cent above the level of new assets gathered at the same stage in November 2014, industry figures show.

According to ETFGI, a firm monitoring this sector, there have been 22 consecutive months of net inflows.

The global industry had 6,104 ETFs/ETPs, with 11,733 listings, assets of $3.0 trillion, from 275 providers listed on 63 exchanges in 51 countries at the end of November.

For definition purposes, exchange traded funds are typically open-ended, index-based funds, with active ETFs accounting for less than 1 per cent market share. They can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange and offer broad exposure across developed, emerging and frontier markets, equities, fixed income and commodities. On the other hand, exchange traded products are similar to ETFs in the way they trade and settle but do not use an open-end fund structure. The use of other structures including unsecured debt, grantor trusts, partnerships, and commodity pools by ETPs can, in addition to a significantly different risk profile, create different tax and regulatory implications for investors when compared to ETFs, which are funds.

In the US, net inflows reached $201.7 billion, which is 5 per cent higher than the prior record set last year; in Canada, net inflows, at $11.4 billion, are up 10.7 per cent over the prior record set in 2012. Year-to-date net inflows in Europe, meanwhile, climbed to $72.6 billion, representing an 18 per cent increase on the record set YTD through end of November 2014. In Japan, YTD net inflows were up 210 per cent on the prior record set in 2013, standing at $33.7 billion at the end of November 2015.