Sabrina Principi, Head of Business Development for ETF and Index Solutions Southern Europe at BNP Paribas Asset Management, explains to Romain Thomas why her company has partnered with online trading platform Directa SIM.
Q: What is the driving force behind the partnership with Directa SIM?
answer: Our partnership with Directa SIM confirms our strategy to provide investors with additional elements to build their asset allocations through our wide range of ETFs.
Q: Why did you choose this trading platform?
answer: Directa SIM is Italy’s leading online trading platform, offering its customers a wide range of financial services. This agreement will enable us to reach more investors, especially retail investors, by making our solutions available to our customers without transaction costs.
Directa has a long history in the field of online trading in Italy dating back to 1995. The company is an innovative player and pays close attention to the accessibility and transparency of information when performing the service of receiving and sending orders. Therefore, in our opinion, the company is the best fit for us.
Q: How is BNP Paribas Asset Management’s ETF business in Italy growing?
answer: We are very pleased that the commercial growth of our index business in Italy has been well received by our customers.sOur strong sustainable expertise. Italy made a significant contribution to the growth of our assets, reaching 47 billion euros worldwide at the end of November. These extremely positive results demonstrate the soundness of our strategy, which from the outset aimed to position us as a key player in sustainable thematic ETFs. We pioneered the field in 2008 with the launch of the first low-carbon ETF, and continued along the way in 2019 with the first his ETF dedicated to the circular economy and many other areas of expertise. .sed products focusing on themes such as blue economy, hydrogen, etc.
Q: Is there a growing interest in ETFs across Southern Europe?
answer: It can be said that interest in index products has steadily increased in recent years, along with innovations in this field. 2023 was the year of fixed income in the ETF space and active products. As interest rates gradually rise, all our solutions are attracting a lot of interest, especially our ESG strategies from euro area governments and our short to medium term corporate SRI bonds, which together raised more than 1.5 euros Did. a million.
Q: What new products do you plan to produce?
answer: In line with our focus on sustainability, we are currently working on a new range of proposals that will enable us to better incorporate our ESG philosophy and integration into the passive realm. That’s all I can say at this point, but I’ll have more details soon.
Q: What distribution method do you use to distribute ETFs?
answer: Currently, institutional investors (as pension plans), portfolio managers and fund buyers/selectors (such as insurance companies, private banks and fund of funds managers) account for the majority of our distributed assets. But the market is changing. Retail distribution through networks or platforms like his Directa is gaining momentum and we are seeing this more and more.