Shinhan Asset Management, SoBuJang ETF... Net Assets Surpass 450 Billion Won

Shinhan Asset Management announced on the 26th that its ETFs focusing on domestic 소재·부품·장비 (hereinafter SoBuJang) companies, ‘SOL Semiconductor SoBuJang Fn’ and ‘SOL Secondary Battery SoBuJang Fn,’ surpassed 450 billion KRW in net assets within three months of listing.

Since their listing, the SOL SoBuJang ETFs, which attracted market attention with their differentiated portfolios concentrated on SoBuJang companies, have established themselves as leading products in this year’s ETF market by delivering strong performance in returns and inflows of funds primarily from individual investors over the past three months. The SOL Semiconductor SoBuJang recorded a 32.25% return with approximately 62 billion KRW of individual investor inflows, growing to a scale of 173.5 billion KRW, while the SOL Secondary Battery SoBuJang rose 39.32%, attracting about 126.2 billion KRW from individual investors and expanding to 287.5 billion KRW.

Junghyun Kim, Head of the ETF Business Division at Shinhan Asset Management, stated, “We believe that constructing a portfolio focused on high-quality SoBuJang stocks in the semiconductor and secondary battery themes, which were previously considered saturated due to numerous existing products in the market, has created new investment demand. Especially in the case of secondary batteries, although competition has intensified as leading ETF providers quickly launched similar concept products, we think this has positively influenced the ETF market by broadening investors’ choices.”

Other ETFs are also showing strong performance. The monthly dividend ETF market, which began with ‘SOL U.S. S&P 500,’ Korea’s first monthly dividend ETF, has grown to approximately 2.8 trillion KRW in about a year due to successive product launches by latecomers. ‘SOL U.S. Dividend Dow Jones,’ which adds a monthly dividend strategy to SCHD (Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF) under the slogan ‘Korean version of SCHD,’ has grown to about 310 billion KRW, including hedge-type products. Competition in the dividend ETF market is intensifying as competitors respond with follow-up launches of similar products and remodeling through distribution strategy and ETF name changes.

Kim added, “The positive aspect is that the results of rigorous consideration from the investor’s perspective during the product development stage are creating a virtuous cycle of fund inflows alongside changes in investment paradigms. We will continue to strive to discover and commercialize hidden needs of customers through steady communication with investors.”

The SOL ETF’s net assets increased from 735.7 billion KRW at the end of last year to approximately 1.777 trillion KRW in about half a year, driven by the successive hits of SOL U.S. Dividend Dow Jones and the SOL SoBuJang series. The 142% growth rate ranks first overwhelmingly among major asset managers. Kim said, “We plan to list two additional follow-up SoBuJang ETFs in August, expanding the total to four ‘SOL SoBuJang series’ flagship products. We also expect to introduce a new concept monthly dividend ETF within this year.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.