HANetf has been created by co-chief executives Hector McNeil and Nik Bienkowski to open up the European Ucits ETF market to new participants.
It includes services such as product development, compliance, capital markets, sales, marketing and distribution, and is expected to be fully operational from the start of 2018.
McNeil and Bienkowski are the team behind two European ETF ventures, ETF Securities and Boost ETP, which later became WisdomTree Europe, which they left in May 2016.
The duo confirmed they are in talks with several asset managers to help them develop and market ETFs.
Overcoming barriers
The platform, which is in the process of raising seed funding, is aiming to disrupt the market by lowering the barriers to entry for asset managers looking to offer an ETF wrapper to their customers without having to set up a whole business.
“We will massively lower the barriers to entry for all asset managers who may look to issue any range of ETFs,” Bienkowski said.
“We want to help any companies who may have thought the road to market too costly, time-consuming or management intensive to issue ETFs under their own efforts,” McNeil added.
Booming market
The platform is also aimed at US asset managers wanting to enter a booming market by launching European versions of their existing ETFs.
Europe is currently the second largest ETF market in the world behind the United States, with almost $670bn (£515bn, €568bn) of assets under management at the end of June, according to data from ETFGI, a consultancy firm researching trends in the global passives market.
Crowded space
However, HANetf is not the only ETF white label platform available in Europe.
In 2013, ETF Securities launched Canvas, a platform allowing asset managers to build passive instruments without existing capabilities by using the ETF specialist’s infrastructure.
Canvas has total ETF assets of $2.5bn, according to ETF Securities.
Several white label platforms have also been established over the years in the US, including ALPS, ETFMG and Exchange Traded Concepts.
Non-stop global inflows
During the first seven months of 2017 a record level of $391.26bn in net inflows have been invested in ETFs/ETPs listed globally, ETFGI reported.
This is greater than the record level of $390.42bn in net inflows that were invested in all of 2016.
In July, ETFs and ETPs listed globally gathered $43.48bn, marking 41 consecutive months of net inflows.
