J.P. Morgan Asset Management announced Wednesday plans to convert four of its mutual funds — with $10 billion in assets under management combined — to exchange-traded funds sometime early next year, subject to the each fund's board approval.
The company stated that the ETF vehicle is a structure that is "well-suited to the four mutual funds currently in scope and will be beneficial to the investors."
The conversion continues a trend on moving mutual funds into ETF vehicles. In June, Dimensional Fund Advisors converted $29 billion in mutual funds to ETFs. Bloomberg said at the time that this move would start a major trend over the next 10 years.
Two notable advantages ETFs have over mutual funds is they are typically cheaper and more tax-efficient, said Daniel Sotiroff, analyst of passive strategies of Morningstar Research Services, who covers DFA.
"A couple of things enabled more active management to get into the ETF space over the past couple of years," Sotiroff told ThinkAdvisor. "[First] you had the 'ETF Rule' that sort of democratized the ability of asset managers to take advantage of some of the exemptions that were previously only granted to a few firms. That really came down to doing things like custom baskets and being able to take full advantage of the tax efficiencies that are in the ETF wrapper."
He said another factor is the rise of nontransparent structures in active management that don't have to disclose holdings every day like most ETFs, which also attracted active managers.
Funds Making Change
The four mutual funds converting to ETFs are:
- JPMorgan International Research Enhanced Equity Fund (OEIAX: AUM $5 billion)
- JPMorgan Market Expansion Enhanced Index Fund (OMEAX: AUM $1.1 billion)
- JPMorgan Realty Income Fund (URTAX: AUM $2.2 billion)
- JPMorgan Inflation Managed Bond Fund (JIMAX: AUM $1.4 billion)
J.P. Morgan Asset Management has $2.6 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2021.
Before the conversion can take place, each mutual fund board must approve the move. The firm noted that "it is anticipated that if the conversions are approved by the boards of the funds, they would not require shareholder approval prior to implementation."
