Robeco begins ‘strategic engagement’ ahead of ETF market entry

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Robeco is building a specialist sales team ahead of its entry into the exchange-traded funds market this year.

The Dutch fund house has advertised for a UK sales manager for ETFs, who will be based in London, and plans to hire up to five sales specialists in mainland Europe in early 2025.

The UK sales director will be responsible for “promoting the company’s ETF products to UK customers, raising awareness of this new capability and driving sales”, according to the job listing.

“The launch of our ETF capability in 2024 is a strategic priority for Robeco and we are establishing a team of specialists to enable us to achieve this ambition,” the job listing says.

This article was previously published by Ignites Europe, a title owned by FT Group.

The intended hiring comes as a growing number of active managers enter the European ETF space ahead of an expected surge in demand.

It follows the appointment of Nick King as head of ETFs last year, who joined from Fidelity International, and Dorcas Phillips, who was recently appointed head of ETF capital markets, also based in London.

“(In terms of) resourcing, we deliver this using the expertise and resources we have across the organisation, but we also recognize that it is important to complement this with specialist skills and experience where necessary,” a King said.

“We believe this approach will allow us to ensure scalability and integrate this additional delivery vehicle into the organization’s operations,” he added.

He said Robeco would hire “a small number of sales specialists in European markets” to work with its existing sales teams.

“We are currently hiring in the UK market, with further hiring in mainland Europe planned for early 2025.”

The €179bn asset manager said this would be between four and five sales staff, with exact locations to be determined.

Robeco said last year that ETFs had been under consideration for some time because of their “increasing popularity and versatility in the investment landscape.”

The asset manager’s new ETF platform will cover a wide range of asset classes such as stocks, bonds and multi-assets.

Speaking at this year’s FundForum conference in June, Robeco chief executive Karin van Baardwijk said the manager was entering the active ETF space in Europe to “protect” against a potential drop in demand for mutual funds.

“We think it’s a very good idea to add an additional proposition that we have from a mutual fund perspective, with active ETFs. It’s also an opportunity for us to tap into a different type of customer.

“We think it’s a very good vehicle to bring our investment IP to market,” she added at the time.

Van Baardwijk said the decision to enter the ETF space was made after “long consideration” of how to build the infrastructure and “find the right people” to “help navigate the landscape which is very different” from what it does the company currently.

She said clients would benefit from “immediacy, transparency and liquidity” with active ETFs and dismissed suggestions they could harm Robeco’s active fund management business.

A number of asset managers are entering the active ETF space in Europe following their huge growth in the US.

Fund houses have launched 35 active ETFs in the past 12 months, more than twice as many as in the previous year, although inflows remain modest.

*Ignites Europe is a news service published by FT Specialist for professionals working in the asset management industry. Trials and subscriptions are available at igniteseurope.com.