Assets invested in ETFs and ETPs (hereafter ETFs) listed in Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) increased by $14bn (8.24%) in January – the greatest absolute monthly increase in assets on record – according to ETF industry consultants ETFGI.

Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) ETFs enjoyed record asset growth in January 2018.

The previous record monthly growth figure of $12.4bn was set in March 2016.

The strong asset growth, which included $2.7bn of net inflows, brought assets under management in ETFs listed in Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) to a new record high of $184bn as of the end of the month.

Equity ETFs received the largest net inflows at $1.6bn, followed by multi-asset ETFs at $922 million.

Fixed income ETFs gathered $777m, while leveraged ETFs had significant net outflows of $1.0bn.

Investors tended to invest in core, market cap and lower-cost ETFs over the month.

The majority of net inflows can be attributed to the top 20 ETFs by net new assets, which collectively rose by $4.9bn in January. The Pingan-UOB CSI 300 ETF (510390 CH) led the pack with net inflows of $843m.

Samsung KODEX 200 ETF (069500 KS) saw the second highest inflows at $694m. This Korea-based fund tracks the Korea Composite Stock Price Index, a market-capitalisation index of 200 Korean stocks which makes up 93% of the total market value of the Korea Stock Exchange.

Source: ETFGI.