State of the SA ETP Industry
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By Mike Brown, Managing Director, ETFSA
The total market capitalisation of all Exchange Traded Products (ETP), listed on the JSE, increased by R69bn in 2025, or by 31% to R294.9m at the end of the year. The increase in the size of all ETFs, ETNs, AMCs and AMETFs, listed on the JSE, to date this year, comes from two areas: capital raised of R19,6bn from the issue of new products, or from the creation of new issues or fresh tranches of products already listed; and the balance has stemmed from the favourable markets experienced in 2025 with equities, both local and global, bonds, commodities and other asset classes increasing in value through much of this year. Some 70% of the market capitalisation of the SA ETF industry is in products tracking or benchmarking, global markets or indices. So, with foreign markets significantly underperforming. South African referenced assets, this factor did inhibit the overall growth of the industry last year.
The total number of ETP products, listed on the JSE, at the end of December 2025, was 291, compared with 254 at the end of 2024. The 37 new products have arisen predominantly from: the listing of 16 new single stock ETNs by FNB, which cover individual shares listed on the US stockmarkets. The range of securities that can be purchased in ETN form in either “compo” (rand based prices), or “quanto” (US dollar based), has now swelled to 29; and steady increases in the number of actively managed certificates (AMCs) and actively managed ETFs (AMETFs), so that this category of actively managed exchange traded products now accounts for 109 separate listings.
For the year as a whole, R19 653,0 million was raised in new capital from the creation of additional ETP securities on the JSE.
For the first time, new capital raised by actively managed ETPs, namely AMCs, with R7 462m, and AMETFs, with R6 853m, exceeded the total new capital raised in ETFs. However, in the case of ETFs, the net new capital raised was significantly impacted by redemptions of commodity-based ETFs, during the second half of 2025.