The four trends in question are; ‘ageing population’, ‘healthcare innovation’, robotics and ‘automation and digitalisation’.
The funds are physically replicating and all have a total expense ratio of 0.40%.
BlackRock said the themes stem from ‘widely acknowledged megatrends’, which it describes as global economic, social, technological and demographic shifts that can have a major influence on everyday lives and are expected to become more important over the coming decades.
In order to offer investors exposure to these themes, BlackRock has collaborated with iSTOXX and FactSet to launch the range. The indices are rules-based, systematic and built using proprietary databases.
The underlying index for each fund employs a ‘unique revenue-focused methodology’ to ensure the most relevant companies for a given theme are consistently maintained. To avoid concentration risk, each index has a minimum of 80 constituents.
The full names of the ETFs are; iShares Ageing Population UCITS ETF (AGED), iShares Healthcare Innovation UCITS ETF (HEAL), iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF (RBOT), and iShares Digitalisation UCITS ETF (DGTL).
“Megatrends are affecting the way we live and work,” said Tom Fekete, head of product for iShares EMEA at BlackRock. “These ETFs look to capture the opportunities created by long-term structural trends, by identifying the companies most aligned to them. They are a new set of tools that investors can use to express their views on these trends, in a transparent, global and cost-efficient way.”
