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Lee Jones reports that the RDR and wider availability through fund supermarkets are set to increase ETF business
Blackrock global head of ETF research and implementation strategy Deborah Fuhr believes ETFs will certainly gain popularity after 2012 due to the RDR. She says: "Many advisers are not even looking at ETFs today because they are tied or multi-tied but the RDR is definitely encouraging advisers to consider ETFs because it says that if they want to become independent they have to look at the whole market.
"IFAs will have to be able to demonstrate why and explain themselves if they sell a structured product with the same returns but a higher fee than an ETF, so the RDR will have a very significant impact on the use of ETFs in that channel."
The fact that ETFs do not pay any commission to financial advisers is often cited as a reason why ETFs do not have a bigger share of the UK retail market. The products have been around in the US for a similar length of time as...