More education needs to be done by exchange traded fund (ETF) providers as self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) trustees are lagging in ETF knolwedge, according to UBS Wealth Management.
UBS’s latest SMSF report, released with the Financial Services Council, found only one in five SMSF trustees surveyed were using ETFs.
UBS head of asset management in Australasia, Bryce Doherty, said as ETFs are growing very quickly in the country the firm thought its growth in the SMSF space would have been more significant in the past 12 months.
“One of the things that came out was 50 per cent of those not using ETFs really cited the fact that they didn’t know about ETFs or didn’t know enough about ETFs to use them,” Doherty said.
“There is still plenty of education work to be done by ETF providers. Ten per cent of those surveyed said they weren’t using ETFs yet but were looking to do it within the next 12 months, that’s roughly the same as last year. It is growing but not growing as quickly as we would have thought.”
The report said closing the awareness/knowledge gap among SMSF holders will be important to growing future take-up of ETFs, with 27 per cent of non-users citing “I am just not up on ETFs” as a current barrier.
According to the survey, ETFs were used by 20 per cent of fund holders this year, and 42 per cent of users citing access to international markets as a reason for ETF use, and 41 per cent using ETFs to invest in global equities.
