South Africa’s top ETF providers revealed

Satrix Managers is South Africa’s largest exchange-traded product (ETP) provider, followed by Sygnia, Absa Capital, FNB, and CoreShares.

It was revealed by ETFSA managing director Mike Brown in his latest “State of the South African Exchange Traded Product (ETP) Industry” report.

At the end of 2022, the market capitalisation of all South African Exchange Traded Products (ETP) at the end of 2022 was R129 billion.

The largest part of the market capitalisation came from three ETP providers – Satrix Managers, Sygnia Itrix, and Absa Capital.

Satrix Managers remains the top South African ETP provider in terms of size, with a total market capitalisation of R38 billion.

Over the past year, it has widened its lead over Sygnia Itrix because of the growth in market capitalisation of the South African-referenced ETFs it has in issue.

Most of the 13 ETFs Satrix has issued on South African equity indices increased their market capitalisation during 2022.

In comparison, most of their foreign-referenced ETFs dropped in market capitalisation last year.

Sygnia Itrix suffered relative to Satrix in 2022 because of its focus on foreign-referenced ETFs in its basket of products.

Only 2 of the 15 ETFs Sygnia has in issue track South African equity indices. The rest all provide links to global market indices.

Accordingly, the poor performance of international markets hit Sygnia last year.

However, as world markets recover, the positioning of Sygnia products in the marketplace could prove more favourable.

Absa Capital will be selling its 15 NewFunds ETFs to Sanlam/Satrix, which will reduce its overall market capitalisation by R5 billion.

In addition, redemptions of Absa’s NewGold ETF, which tracks the price of gold, platinum, and palladium, amounted to R3.2 billion in 2022.

Absa has, therefore, experienced a significant decline in the value and scope of its ETP offerings last year.

The table below provides an overview of the South African Exchange Traded Product industry at the end of 2022.