2011 could be the year for Islamic Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), so thinks Robert Broadwell, director of iShares in London and Dubai, US asset manager BlackRock's platform for ETFs.
Broadwell was speaking to The Islamic Globe at the sidelines of a recent investment conference being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and said he was experiencing increased inflows to the iShares portfolio of Shari'ah compliant ETFs. He said: "iShares currently has three Shari'ah compliant ETFs in the market, that track the Islamic MSCI indices: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Islamic, iShares MSCI USA Islamic and the iShares MSCI World Islamic, domiciled in Ireland."
Broadwell said that there had been a significant increase in investments into the ETFs. He said: "Currently the assets under management in these three ETFs are around $160m. The turnover in them during the last 18 months was half a billion dollars," however in the last three weeks, "$20m was invested in [our Shari'ah compliant] ETFs."
Islamic ETFs are still a very small part of the global $1.3tr ETF market, but Broadwell said that it was a rapidly growing sector and iShares would be ready to issue more Shari'ah compliant ETFs that would track indices from other providers such as Dow Jones Indexes if there was a sustained demand.
He added: "A lot of our customers are family offices, because for them ETFs provide an easy way to access different markets."
© The Islamic Globe 2011
