The majority (61 per cent) of global institutional investors are considering increasing their allocations to exchange-traded funds in the next year, down significantly from 82 per cent in 2022, according to a survey by Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., a private investment bank.

The survey, which polled 325 global institutional investors, including institutional investors and fund managers, also looked more specifically at certain categories of ETFs. It found 82 per cent of respondents said they plan to increase their exposure to actively managed ETFs, down from 92 per cent last year. And 69 per cent of said they plan to maintain or increase their allocations to commodity-based ETFs.

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The survey also found lower interest among institutional investors in increasing or maintaining their exposures to environmental, social and governance-themed ETFs, with just half (50 per cent) of respondents indicating an interest in expanding their allocations to the subcategory.

According to Brown Brothers Harriman, the total value of assets held by ETFs has more than quadrupled in the past decade, growing from US$2.4 trillion in 2013 to US$9.23 trillion at the end of 2022.

A report released by Nasdaq Inc. in February pegged the global trading volume of ETFs at US$53 trillion in 2022, up from US$41 trillion in 2021. In its most recent report on the size of Canadian-domiciled ETFs, which was released in March 2022, Cerulli Associates found the Canadian portion of the market reached US$255 billion at the end of 2021, a US$39 billion increase over the previous year.

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