American Century’s ETF operations hit a key milestone last week, surpassing $25 billion in assets under management across the 36 ETFs it markets under its American Century and Avantis brands. The firm first entered the market a little over five years ago.
“[The issuer] has had success with a mix of actively managed and index based ETFs. They are an example of a well-established mutual fund firm that has successfully met advisors in the ETF industry," said Todd Rosenbluth.
The fund family has pulled in $5.2 billion year-to-date, with the Avantis U.S. Small Cap Value ETF (AVUV ) alone accounting for more than $1 billion of that amount. AVUV is also the largest fund in the family at $6 billion in assets under management.
American Century's 2018 Market Entry
The issuer rolled out its first ETFs in January 2018 with the launches of the American Century Diversified Corporate Bond ETF (KORP ) and the American Century STOXX U.S. Quality Value ETF (VALQ ). Those funds now have assets under management of $198.4 million and $217.1 million, respectively.
It debuted its Avantis Investors brand in September 2019. The Avantis arm is led by Eduardo Repetto, a former co-CEO and co-CIO of Dimensional Fund Advisors. Avantis relies on a similar investment approach to DFA. It runs actively managed portfolios that tilt toward the size, profitability and value factors. The brand has been incredibly successful. With $23.6 billion, represents the majority of assets invested in ETFs issued by American Century.
The issuer also caused a stir by launching the first-ever nontransparent actively managed ETFs at the start of April in 2020, amid the ramping coronavirus pandemic. The American Century Focused Large Cap Value ETF (FLV ) and the American Century Focused Dynamic Growth ETF (FDG ) use the Precidian model for active nontransparent ETFs and currently have $237 million and $175 million in AUM, respectively.
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