ETFs Gain Assets Overall; Leveraged ETFs Lose Assets

Exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets rose $47.4 billion, or 8%, in July, according to State Street Global Advisors (SSgA).

As of July 31, assets in the U.S. ETF industry totaled $640 billion. A total of 751 ETFs in were managed by 27 ETF managers, according to the SPDR ETF Snapshot for July 2009 from SSgA, a manager of ETFs.

Eleven of the 12 categories of ETFs gained assets. The International category saw the most inflows, rising the most in absolute and percentage terms, up $16.6 billion, or 12.6%.

Inverse/Leverage was the only category to lose assets, down $1.9 billion, according to the report. Leveraged ETFs have come under criticism by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for being unsuitable for retail investors. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney recently joined Edward Jones and UBS to stop the sale of the instruments (see “MSSB Bans Leveraged ETF Sales”).  

ETFs also gained assets across style/size and sector for the most part. By size/style, assets were up $19.4 billion, or 9.1%. Gains were spread evenly across categories with seven gaining in double-digit percentage terms.

Most of the 10 sectors saw asset gains, but Consumer Staples saw a decline. Assets are up 17.2% overall, with Materials seeing the largest year-to-date gain (69.2%). Other big asset percentage changes were seen in Consumer Discretionary (50.8%) and Technology (63.7%). 

MetLife Enhances Benefits Benchmarking Tool

MetLife has enhanced its Web-based Benefits Benchmarking Tool for employers and brokers to compare benefits to companies with a similar profile.

Through customized queries, the tool now allows for comparing and contrasting benefits offerings, objectives, strategies, and preferences along more than 80 dimensions such as industry, company size, region, and many employee demographics, according to MetLife. Users can compare and contrast the data along multiple variables, creating more than 600 possible charts.

Another new feature of MetLife’s Benefits Benchmarking Tool is the ability for employers and brokers to answer a few questions to determine their—or their client’s—benefits profile. Determining into which of four benefits profiles an employer falls can not only help in defining the current approach to benefits, but also help in determining future benefits strategies, MetLife said.

Through examining market research data about employer attitudes about benefits business objectives and strategies, Ronald Leopold, vice president, MetLife U.S. Business, found four distinct benefits profiles (see “MetLife Book Offers Strategies for Maximizing Benefits Investment”), which he labeled: Traditional (preserving commitments), Standard (providing the basics), Progressive (innovating for competitive advantage), and Flexible (balancing employee choice and cost).

The MetLife Benefits Benchmarking Tool uses as its underlying data the MetLife Study of Employee Benefits Trends and the MetLife 2008 Open Enrollment Study (see “Study Finds Employer-Worker Disconnect about Advice” and “Gen Y Wants Financial Advice in the Workplace”).

The free tool is available at www.whymetlife.com/benefitsbenchmark.

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