Robeco starts ‘strategic hiring’ ahead of entry into ETF market

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Robeco is building a specialist sales team ahead of its entrance into the exchange traded funds market this year.

The Dutch fund house has advertised for a UK sales manager for ETFs, who will be based in London, and plans to hire up to five more sales specialists in continental Europe in early 2025.

The UK sales manager will be responsible for “promoting the firm’s ETF products to UK clients, creating awareness of this new capability and driving sales”, according to the job listing.

“Launching our ETF capability in 2024 is a strategic priority for Robeco and we are establishing a specialist team to allow us to realise this ambition,” the job listing says.

This article was previously published by Ignites Europe, a title owned by the FT Group.

The intended hires come as an increasing number of active managers enter the ETF space in Europe ahead of an expected surge in demand.

It follows the appointment of Nick King as head of ETFs last year, who joined from Fidelity International, and Dorcas Phillips, who has recently been made head of ETF capital markets, also based in London.

“[In terms of] resourcing, we are delivering this using the expertise and resources that we have across the organisation, but we also recognise that it is important to complement this with specialist skills and experience where necessary,” said King.

“We believe that this approach will enable us to ensure scalability and embed this additional delivery vehicle into the operations of the organisation,” he added.

He said Robeco would be hiring “a small number of sales specialists across European markets” to work with its existing sales teams.

“We are hiring in the UK market at the moment, with additional hires in continental Europe planned for early 2025.”

The €179bn asset manager said this would be between four and five sales staff, with exact locations to be determined.

Last year Robeco said ETFs had been under consideration for some time due to “their growing popularity and versatility in the investment landscape”.

The asset manager’s new ETF platform will cover a wide range of asset classes such as equities, bonds and multi-asset.

Speaking at this year’s FundForum conference in June, Robeco chief executive officer Karin van Baardwijk said the manager was entering the active ETF space in Europe to “protect itself” against a potential decline in demand for mutual funds.

“We feel it’s a very good idea to add an extra proposition that we have from a mutual fund perspective, with active ETFs. It’s also an opportunity for us to tap into a different client type.

“We see it as a very good vehicle to get our investment IP to market,” she added at the time.

Van Baardwijk said the decision to enter the ETF space was made after “a long consideration” on how to build the infrastructure and “finding the right people” to “help navigate the landscape that is very different” from what the firm currently does.

She said clients would benefit from “immediacy, transparency and liquidity” with active ETFs and dismissed suggestions that they could harm Robeco’s active fund management business.

A number of asset managers are entering the active ETF space in Europe following their huge growth in the US.

Fund houses have launched 35 active ETFs over the past 12 months, more than twice as many as the previous year, although inflows remain modest.

*Ignites Europe is a news service published by FT Specialist for professionals working in the asset management industry. Trials and subscriptions are available at igniteseurope.com.