According to BlackRock’s second quarter earnings report, the firm’s ETF arm iShares has crossed $1.5 trillion in assets under management after adding a record $74 billion of net inflows during the three months.

BlackRock has reported $74bn of net inflows into its iShares range of ETFs during Q2 2017.

Equity ETF net inflows of $51.8bn were driven by both US and international equity market exposures; fixed income ETFs attracted net inflows of $21.0bn which reflected inflows into investment grade corporate, emerging markets debt and treasury bond funds; and commodity ETFs generated approximately $700 million of net inflows.

According to the report, “Growth was balanced among iShares core funds, precision exposures and financial instruments, demonstrating that ETFs are no longer used only as passive allocations, but increasingly by active investors to generate alpha in their portfolios. We continue to focus investments in distribution, portfolio construction technology and ETF education as iShares growth opportunities migrate more rapidly to accelerating adoption and new uses of ETFs.”

In an effort to generate more inflows BlackRock decided in October to reduce the fees charged on its range of core ETFs. Demand for core ETFs, low cost, broad index trackers which are designed to act as foundational building blocks for investors’ long- term buy and hold portfolios, has been a key trend driving growth in the ETF industry in general. The cheapest fund in the iShares core range is the iShares Core S&P Total US Stock Market ETF (NYSE Arca: ITOT) which costs just 0.03% (See: BlackRock cuts fees of iShares Core ETF suite).

As of the end of June, BlackRock has reported $1.139tn of assets within its equities ETFs, $365.0bn within its fixed income ETFs, $20.2bn within its alternatives ETFs and $3.2bn within its multi-asset ETFs.

Total iShares AUM of $1.528tn at the end of the quarter represents 37.2% of a global $4.110tn ETP AUM, as reported in BlackRock’s Global ETP Landscape report for June.