Assets under management of exchange traded funds and products continue to scale fresh heights.

Another record has been scored by the global exchange traded fund and product industry, with assets held by these entities breaking above $3.0 trillion at the end of May, according to ETFGI, an organisation tracking the sector.

At the end of May, the global ETF/ETP industry had 5,757 ETFs/ETPs, with 11,117 listings, from 256 providers listed on 62 exchanges in 51 countries, a report from the firm said.

ETFs are typically open-ended, index-based funds, with active ETFs accounting for less than 1 per cent of the market. They can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange and offer broad exposure to developed, emerging and frontier markets across equities, fixed income and commodities. Exchange traded products are similar to ETFs in some ways but do not use an open-end fund structure.
 
“Our forecast was that assets would break through $3 trillion by the middle of 2015. It took the global ETF/ETP industry 19 years to reach $1 trillion in assets under management, 23 years to reach $2 trillion in AuM and just 25 years to reach $3 trillion in AuM. The increasing rate of asset growth illustrates how ETFs have been embraced as an investment solution by institutional investors, financial advisors and retail investors around the world,” Deborah Fuhr, managing partner of ETFGI, said.
 
Record levels of assets were also reached at the end of May for ETFs/ETPs listed in the US, at $2.15 trillion, and Japan, at $117 billion.
 
In May 2015, ETFs/ETPs listed globally saw net inflows of $19.1 billion.  Equity ETFs/ETPs gathered net inflows of $20.8 billion, while fixed income ETFs/ETPs experienced net outflows of $1.5 billion and commodity ETFs/ETPs had net outflows of $912 million.
 
Vanguard gathered the largest net ETF/ETP inflows in May with $5.2 billion, followed by Huatai-PB with $3.4 billion, WisdomTree with $1.7 billion net inflows and First Trust with $1.6 billion.