Will retail ETF adoption in Europe continue amid global uncertainty?

Overview

What’s behind the surge in ETF interest from Europe’s new generation of investors? How are platforms and asset managers responding to the demand for transparent, low-cost products? 

This episode of Market Dialogues features Ferat Ozturk, Head of Xtrackers Digital Distribution EMEA at DWS, Julius Weller, Vice President Broker at Scalable Capital, and Selina Kirby, Head of Digital & Execution Only, UK Client Group at Vanguard, join Henry Jim, ETF Analyst, at Bloomberg Intelligence, to discuss how issuers and platforms are working to close the education gap and evolve product offerings for a growing audience of self-directed investors. 

Source: ETFs in Depth, June 18, 2025, London

About the series

The Market Dialogues podcast series provides access to curated, thought-provoking discussions from Bloomberg global events. It offers in-depth insights from experts on key trends and themes driving the markets today and beyond. 

Discover more conversations in the Market Dialogues series here. 

In focus

Featured insights from this episode of Market Dialogues: 

On changing sources of investor education 

Selina Kirkby: What we are finding is [that] about 80% of new investors are under 45. So they are wanting to educate themselves and learn about investing and where to invest…We’re seeing a huge growth in trust in social media. Whether or not we like it, social media, AI – everyone has got advice in their pocket now… [so] when we think about education, it is really important for the industry to be able to educate the end investor.* 

Ferat Ozurk: Once you try to engage with retail investors through [social media] platforms, it’s a different language which you have to use… market volatility, duration, sharp ratios. Most of the retail investors, are not there yet… It would be the overall goal of the whole ETF ecosystem, whether that would be broker, [or] providers… to make sure that people get more comfortable with the benefits of investing. 

Julius Weller: We work not only with marketing partners influencers, but we [also] create a lot of content ourselves that is video content in long or short format for YouTube or the social media channels that is a podcast, but also the very traditional newsletters and blogs… I think [there is a] growing number of people that are interested in those topics, want to understand them, and watch hour-long videos on YouTube about ETFs, the mechanics…and they will also be the buyers of more complicated, sophisticated products. 

On demand for financial product innovation in Europe 

Ferat Ozurk: Retail clients just started with a one-size-fits-all product, almost broad-based equity, and now we already see the trend toward new themes. Thematic investing is a great [example]… We do have quite a large AI ETF – it is now among the top three saving-plan choices across platforms. Two years ago that was not the case, so there’s definitely a big demand for innovation from retail clients. What’s important to understand that at the moment, if you look into the assets, it looks different compared to institutional investors because it’s not so much multi-asset, not so much fixed income. It’s a lot and heavily focused on equity strategies.

Selina Kirkby: Having multi-asset exposures [among issuers offerings] will be really important. And what we’re seeing is I think a growth in these neo brokers and recognizing there’s a lot of money in mutual funds still and actually looking to offer those alongside ETFs. So whilst there’s a growth in ETFs, we’re also seeing people being offered mutual funds alongside because they recognize that clients want to have their assets in one place and there’s a vast amount of money in the mutual funds.  

*Quotations have been edited for brevity and clarity.