Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (Deutsche AWM) has announced that their US X-trackers exchange-traded fund platform has surpassed $20bn in assets under management (AUM), pushing them into the top-10 rankings of ETF providers in the US by market share. Net inflows have soared by 365% year-to-date, establishing the German investment firm as one of the fastest growing ETF franchises in the US. With over $76bn in global ETF AUM, Deutsche AWM is currently the world’s fifth largest ETF provider.

Jerry Miller, Head of DeAWM in the Americas.

“We are extremely proud of reaching this important milestone,” said Jerry Miller, Head of Deutsche AWM in the Americas. “In just two years, we have taken our platform from under $500m to $20bn in assets under management, proving our commitment to delivering innovative investment strategies to our clients and the opportunity that lies ahead of us.”

The firm has benefited from successfully anticipating investor demand in niche and specialised areas, most notably currency-hedged equities and China.

The platform was the first to offer physical access to China’s A-share equity markets and, more recently, initiated the first US-listed ETF to track the JPX-Nikkei 400 Index.

“We remain committed to our strategy of growing our market share by creating differentiated, indexing products and strategies that anticipate investors’ portfolio needs,” said Fiona Bassett, Head of Passive for Deutsche AWM in the Americas. “Our goal is to create products that address investors’ unmet needs, optimise portfolios and enhance risk-adjusted returns over the long term.”

“Driven by massive divergence in central bank policies across the globe, we have experienced outsized demand for our currency-hedged ETFs,” added Bassett. “As a European-based bank, we will continue to leverage our local insight to offer the most comprehensive suite of currency-hedged international equity ETFs in the US.”

Their flagship currency-hedged ETF, the Deutsche X-trackers MSCI EAFE Hedged Equity Fund (DBEF), has grown from $1.7bn to approximately $14.1 billion in assets under management since the beginning of 2015. The fund trades in US dollars on the NYSE Arca and tracks the performance of major companies listed in non-US developed market economies, while mitigating exposure to fluctuations between the US dollar and the underlying currencies. The total expense ratio is 0.35%.

The US X-trackers platform currently offers 24 ETFs, 17 of which provide hedging of the underlying currencies.