JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF, which ranks as the world’s second-largest actively managed exchange-traded fund despite being less than 3 years old, had its best week for net inflows last week and recently scored its first endowment investor win.
The fund, which had $18.5 billion in assets under management as of Wednesday, attracted about $483 million of net inflows during the week ended Jan. 13, a single-week inflow record for the fund that was launched in May 2020, according to data provided by a spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Bryon Lake, a managing director and global head of ETF solutions at JPMAM, said he was unable to name the endowment for confidentiality reasons, but he described it as a university endowment. Mr. Lake said that although the ETF, whose ticker is JEPI, has yet to notch a pension fund win, that’s a status he believes is likely to change soon for the ETF, which is approaching its third anniversary.
Along with fund size, a three-year track record is “a big deal” for institutions, including pension funds, Mr. Lake said. Over the next three to 12 months, “I think we will see a significantly increased usage of this product by pensions in particular,” he added.
The only actively managed ETF bigger than JEPI is its sibling, the $24 billion JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF, “and that is owned by pensions,” Mr. Lake said.
JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF has been a “triumph” for JPMAM, said Elisabeth Kashner, vice president and director of global funds research and analytics at FactSet Research Systems.
“Its 2022 return of -3.54% was head and shoulders above the U.S. large-cap market’s return of -19.66%, as measured by the MSCI USA Large Cap index,” Ms. Kashner said.
The two JPMAM funds rank as the world’s biggest actively managed ETFs, according to FactSet’s current data, she said.
