BlackRock has brought two actively-managed ETF strategies to European investors as UCITS –the iShares World Equity High Income UCITS ETF (WINC) and the iShares US Equity High Income UCITS ETF (INCU).
Both funds chiefly aim to provide income while also generating capital appreciation, through a portfolio of dividend-paying stocks and by selling call options.
The vehicles will use a combination of machine learning, big data and human insight, under BlackRock’s dividend rotation strategy, in order to forecast which stocks will beat and lag the market at various points.
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They will be managed by BlackRock’s systematic team, as well as by the iShares ETF platform teams. Raffaele Savi, Robert Fisher and Anna Hawley will be lead managers on the World Equity High Income fund, while Savi, Fisher and Travis Cooke will head up the US Equity High Income fund. Both vehicles have total expense ratios of 0.35%.
Jane Sloan, EMEA head of global product solutions at BlackRock, said: “Our clients’ business models in Europe are rapidly changing – a shift to centralised investment propositions, a focus on whole portfolio outcomes, a rise in digital wealth platforms, a new market regime – all mean our clients require a broader set of investment strategies across index and active, including the wrappers they’re delivered in.”
