Korea Investment Management said on the 5th that the market share increase of its ACE exchange-traded funds (ETFs) ranked No. 1 among 28 ETF managers last year. It added that this marked No. 1 for the second straight year, following 2024.
According to the Korea Financial Investment Association, as of the end of last year, Korea Investment Management's ETF market share stood at 8.53%. The company said this was a 0.97 percentage point increase from the end of 2024, the strongest growth among domestic ETF managers.
ACE ETFs have shown steady growth over the past three years. Assets under management, which were only 3.0527 trillion won at the end of 2022, jumped to 25.3505 trillion won as of the end of last year. Market share more than doubled from 3.89% to 8.53%.
A differentiated product lineup is cited as the growth driver. KIM launched 54 new products over the past three years, and the ACE U.S. AI Tech Core Industries Active ETF, listed in Oct., logged individual net purchases of 28.1 billion won on its listing day. The ACE U.S. Big Tech TOP7 Plus ETF and ACE Tesla Value Chain Active ETF also drew steady interest, with individual net purchases of 184 billion won and 130.2 billion won, respectively.
Existing lineup products also supported growth. The ACE KRX Gold Spot ETF recorded individual net purchases of 1.1972 trillion won last year, ranking No. 8 in individual net purchases among 1,058 domestic ETFs, while the ACE U.S. S&P 500 ETF (576 billion won) and ACE U.S. Nasdaq 100 ETF (451.8 billion won) remained steady picks for individual investors. As a result, 3.3985 trillion won—about 10% of the individual net purchases recorded by the domestic ETF market over the year—flowed into ACE ETFs last year
Nam Yong-su, head of ETF management at KIM, said, "Last year, in addition to big tech products with strong future growth potential, we also introduced new dividend and bond-type products suitable for investment through pension accounts, and for listed products we improved them in ways helpful to investors, such as raising equity weights or changing the calculation methods of underlying indexes," adding, "This year as well, we will do our best to provide products and investment information that help investors."