South Africa's first independent exchange traded funds investment platform for financial advisors
Dr Iraj Abedian, well known economist announced today the launch of itransact, a new Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) investment product platform, which will cater for financial advisors by bringing together all Exchange Traded Funds in one convenient place. Itransact will host inaugural launch events for Financial Advisors and the Press in Gauteng on the 31st of August and in Cape Town on the 7th of September.
Almost all ETFs are FSB approved Collective Investment Schemes and it is expected that Itransact will compliment other investment product platforms by offering financial advisors a spread of low cost ETFs. This will allow financial advisors to expose their clients to the unique benefits which ETFs offer such as direct participation in the performance of the market through a single, simple, investment. Investors will also benefit from significant cost savings as a result of ETFs passive management style which is quite different to an actively managed fund (such as a unit trust) where the manager continually trades assets in an effort to outperform the market.
ETFs are listed funds that track the performance of an index (such as the FTSE/JSE Top 40 Companies Index) without trying to outperform it thereby mitigating the element of "managerial risk" i.e. where fund managers attempt to pick the winners from the losers and then time their investments into those shares based on forecasts.
“A major reason why ETFs do not have greater market share among retail investors is due to a limited awareness of ETFs by investors. Financial advisors dominate the retail investment market and therefore hold the key to effective ETF distribution to the retail investor” ” says Lance Solms, director at itransact. Solms also said “itransact firmly believes in the value of impartial independent financial advice, and will offer its platform services through independent financial advisers”.
