James Kirby

So it's sort of drifted ever so slightly.

So it started off with this terribly conservative, perfect reproduction of existing markets.

We'll just stick with that S&P 500 example.

And that was there and someone said, I want to buy the S&P 500.

I'll buy an index fund.

It might later called an ETF, which might be from you, might be from any of the other well-known ETF providers.

And it's started to evolve more recently into what they call active ETFs, where they just change the rules ever so slightly.

So they don't perfectly reproduce something.

They put in a rule which, for instance, companies that are of a certain size or certain nature, they put in these rules and they become active ETFs.

Now, can you tell us

Like what portion of your funds would be active as opposed to the traditional vanilla index fund?

But this evolution towards an active ETF, could you explain to the listener who isn't sure how this all works, the difference between an active ETF and, I won't call it an inactive ETF, but a traditional passive ETF?

Okay.

So just to make it clear, you don't do it, but your rivals will launch active ETFs in various ways.

And what I wanted to ask you was...

As ETFs get classified as more and more active, and in the US, obviously, they've reached a level which is quite exotic.

I think people would be stunned to figure out what some of the products that are available in the US that are called ETFs.

What I ask you is, has the gap between managed funds as we knew them, which was a bunch of stock pickers in an office, basically picking stocks, and index funds, which do not do that, which reflect indices, has that gap narrowed?

Yes, that's exactly what I was driving at, that it's evolving all the time, folks, and it's worth knowing and not assuming, by the way, what you might have thought an ETF was when you first heard about them, perhaps 10 years ago.

It's not what they are today in many cases.