Seven of the ten best-selling exchange-traded funds in Europe were promoted by iShares, Blackrock’s ETF business, according to fund researcher Lipper.

Detlef Glow, head of research for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Lipper, said in a report yesterday that ETF flows were highly concentrated in Europe last year. iShares had net sales of €30.3bn, out of a total €71.2bn, to maintain its position as the best-selling ETF promoter in the region. The seven iShares funds in the top ten gathered a total of €16bn.

The best-selling ETF, iShares Core MSCI World Ucits ETF, accounted for net inflows of €2.6bn or 3.64% of the overall net inflows, followed by iShares Euro Stoxx 50 UcitsETF with €2.6bn and iShares Core S&P 500 Ucits ETF with €2.3bn. BlackRock said in its Global ETP Landscape report for December 2015 that iShares had $33.9bn of inflows in Europe last year and a market share of 45.6%, 0.9% lower than in 2014.

Lipper said Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management’s db x-trackers was in second place with ETF sales of €10bn in Europe last year and Societe Generale’s Lyxor ETF was third with €8.8bn. BlackRock said db x-trackers had a market share of 12.8%, a 1.3% rise on 2014 – which was the largest increase amongst the top 10 providers, while Lyxor had a share of 10.5%, 0.1% less than 2014.

Glow said: “Since the flows of the ten top promoters accounted for 98.28% of the overall estimated net flows into ETFs in Europe for 2015, it is clear that some of the 49 promoters (13) faced net outflows, (-€1.3bn in total) over the course of 2015.”

As ETF flows were highly concentrated, so were assets under management. Only 103 of the 2,102 instruments listed as ETFs in Europe in the Lipper database at the end of 2015 had assets of more than €1bn. The ten largest ETFs in Europe accounted for €81.8bn or 18.22% of the overall assets under management.

Total assets under management in the European ETF industry increased from €368.9bn in 2014 to €449.3bn last year said Lipper. Morningstar, the fund research provider, has said the European ETF industry had record net inflows of €70.8bn last year and could reach €1 trillion in assets under management by 2020.

Jose Garcia-Zarate, senior ETF analyst with Morningstar Europe, said in a report: “Together with 2014 – another year of high inflows by historical standards – the data seems to indicate that the European ETF industry has entered a phase of strong growth, thus giving credence to industry predictions that foresee assets under management hitting the €1 trillion mark by 2020.”

Last month inflows continued into ETFs despite difficult market conditions as the global ETF/ETP industry gathered net inflows of $13.1bn in net new assets according to preliminary data from consultancy ETFGI’s industry insights report. The consultancy said ETFs/ETPs listed globally have now gathered net inflows for 24 consecutive months.

Last month fixed income had the largest net inflows of $12.5bn followed by commodities with net inflows of $3.4bn. In contrast equities had the largest net outflows of $8.5bn last month.

Featured image via Comugnero Silvana/Dollar Photo Club