Rebranding Campaign Accelerates ETF Enters a New Era of Branding

According to the revised Fund Business Guidelines released by the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges last November, all existing listed ETFs must complete an expanded abbreviation change before the end of March. A renaming campaign covering the entire ETF industry has entered a sprint phase. In recent days, multiple public fund companies have issued announcements in quick succession, batch-adjusting the trading-floor abbreviations of their ETFs, changing them to a unified format of “core elements of the investment underlying + ETF + fund manager.”

What does this renaming campaign mean? For funds from different fund companies under the same index, how should they attract investors to linger? Several industry insiders, in interviews with China Securities Journal, said that although this unified renaming appears to be only a small change in naming, it will not only put an end to the long-standing “abbreviation premium,” but also push ETF competition into a deeper level of brand-power contest, and may even help reshape the industry ecosystem.

Saying goodbye to the “abbreviation premium”

On March 27, four ETFs under Invesco Great Wall Fund changed their trading-floor abbreviations; on March 24, eight ETFs under Allianz China Asset Management changed their trading-floor abbreviations; on March 22, Tianhong Fund announced that 13 ETFs would change their trading-floor abbreviations starting March 31; on March 20, 14 ETFs under China Merchants Fund and 39 ETFs under Harvest Fund changed their trading-floor abbreviations……

Looking back at this renaming campaign, it can be traced back to November 2025, when the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges issued the revised Fund Business Guidelines. The guidelines standardize the naming of expanded trading-floor ETF abbreviations. Since then, ETFs across the market have gradually undergone renaming. This year, starting in March, the renaming campaign has accelerated significantly. According to Wind data, as of March 26, among more than 1,400 ETFs across the market, only less than 5% have not yet been renamed, with the total number standing at fewer than 70.

The renaming campaign shows two clear changes. On the one hand, it further clarifies the fund’s investment direction. For example, some products previously abbreviated as “Gold ETFs” have been explicitly defined as “Shanghai Gold ETF”; “HK-listed Tech ETF” has been clarified as “Stock Connect Tech ETF”; and “2000ETF” has been clarified as whether it is the “CSI 2000 ETF” or the “CSG 2000 ETF.” On the other hand, by adding the fund company name at the end of the ETF abbreviation, the product manager is implemented with “real-name” identification.

Many industry participants said that after the renaming, ETFs will have clearer identifiers; for investors, this will greatly reduce decision-making difficulty and lower the time cost of screening. For fund companies, the era of抢占 ETF “abbreviation premium” has already ended, given the rule of first-come, first-served and the restriction that no more than two products can share the same abbreviation. Market competition will move to a deeper level.

When it comes to forecasts for future ETF competition, “brand competition” and “ecosystem building” have become two high-frequency phrases.

At the starting line of the same abbreviation, the importance of brand competition is self-evident. Sun Yu, Executive General Manager of the Index & Futures Investment Department at Dacheng Fund, believes that since ETFs are tool-like products with a high degree of homogenization, after unified naming, it will be difficult for early-mover products to gain an advantage again through abbreviations. To deeply resonate, a brand must be cultivated. HuaTai-PineBridge Fund believes that in an era with more than a thousand ETFs, when products tracking the same index can be a dozen or more, brand recognition becomes a breakthrough point for building competitiveness. Southern Fund said strengthening the manager’s identifier helps investors quickly identify product ownership, consolidating brand recognition. Tianhong Fund said plainly that behind a simple renaming lies a shift of ecosystem building to a more prominent position. Ping An Fund believes that after unified renaming is implemented, for fund companies, the meaning of ETFs will rise from being a mere investment instrument to a concentrated embodiment of a company’s comprehensive ecosystem capabilities, including product layout, investment and research capabilities, and investor service and companionship. Zhao Yunyang, General Manager of the Index and Quantitative Investment Department and also Investment Director at Bosera Fund, said that competition among ETFs will rely even more on each fund company’s ecosystem-building ability.

Focusing on building brand strength

Since ETF brand competition is becoming increasingly important, then from the perspective of fund companies, how should ETFs build brand strength? Whether it is top-tier public funds or smaller public funds, the answer points to differentiation.

Zhao Yunyang said that the brand competitiveness of an ETF is related to the fund company’s overall strength across the ETF business line, including the total scale of ETFs, the number of ETFs, reputation among institutional clients, market influence, and more. Different fund companies have different resource endowments. Since ETF operating costs are relatively high, fund companies—especially smaller ones—need to adopt differentiated competition strategies, including product differentiation, client differentiation, and service differentiation.

Tianhong Fund said that under the dual challenges of “the strong get stronger” in ETFs and homogenized competition, avoiding short-term behaviors of blindly fighting for fee rates, quantity, and node scale has become an important issue. The company is taking a path of differentiation. Leveraging its large number of off-platform users to reach more investors; its product layout does not pursue being big and comprehensive, but instead prioritizes emerging investment areas and focuses on launching “Smart Beta” ETFs—an innovative product category that can reflect active management capabilities.

Sun Yu introduced that during the process of building the “Choose Dacheng” brand, Dacheng Fund is also working to forge distinctive high-quality products, such as non-ferrous futures ETFs, Hang Seng Tech ETFs, CSI A50 ETFs, and others, and has been gradually improving a comprehensive product lineup.

Ping An Fund said that the company’s product layout not only covers the breadth across different tracks, but also builds differentiation advantages in segmented areas. In the equity domain, it anchors to the direction of technological innovation and high-end manufacturing, launches its first new energy vehicle ETF, lays out multiple emerging tracks, and issues its first CSI A50 ETF. In the fixed-income domain, it builds a “bond ETF trio” brand, with total product scale ranking among the industry’s first-tier group.

It is worth noting that for differentiated brand building, developing customized index products is also considered by industry insiders as a possible reference path. A staff member from the research and development department of an index compilation company said that fund companies can reduce concerns about homogenization by choosing customized indices based on their own needs, because customized indices require authorization from the party that customizes them—allowing other entities to issue corresponding ETF products. For long-term capital, there may also be opportunities for fee discounts.

However, this process also has areas that need improvement. He Tianxiang, General Manager of the Index and Quantitative Investment Department at Rongtong Fund, said that customized indices can achieve differentiated layout goals through innovative compilation methods and relatively independent issuance approaches, thereby providing investors with new choices of investment tools and having advantages of innovation and differentiation. But its development process is relatively long.

Zhao Yunyang also said that for fund companies with strong capabilities, customized indices indeed have the potential to better leverage research abilities and help achieve differentiated competition. The downside is that the fee rates are higher, and because there are many index companies, peer fund companies can choose other index companies to replicate similar indices.

Building a full-scope ecosystem

“Choose the company that’s more well-known,” “Choose the fund company you’re more familiar with”… similar sayings have become answers that many investors blurt out. When there are many ETFs under the same index, the general trend is to prefer fund companies with higher brand awareness and recognition. This again proves the importance of ETF branding.

At the same time, some investors are also more concerned about ETF product scale, intraday liquidity, and supporting investment services. And this aligns precisely with the ecosystem-building thinking mentioned by fund companies.

In its research, China Securities Journal found that this ecosystem-building mindset means ETF product layout is no longer a single-point approach, but rather forms a product matrix with clear positioning for each product. It not only focuses on ETF issuance and fundraising, but also extends attention to the full chain of investment operation management, maintaining liquidity on the trading floor, continuous marketing, and more. It not only provides ETF tools, but also provides tool usage guidance and allocation plans, improving investor service and companionship.

On the eve of completion of the unified renaming of ETF trading abbreviations, some fund companies have already started to sprint to optimize their ETF ecosystems.

Taking intraday liquidity maintenance as an example, recently announcements about adding liquidity service providers or designating market makers for ETFs have come one after another. It has become common for a single ETF to be equipped with three liquidity service providers. There are also fund companies stating that many of their ETFs are assigned six to seven market makers, which can smoothly meet investors’ needs for intraday trading.

In addition, the shift from “providing tools” to “providing solutions” has also become a common choice.

On March 20, on the day Ping An Fund changed the abbreviations of 34 ETFs under its management, it announced the launch of a new one-stop ETF investment ecosystem. Hu Qi, Assistant to the General Manager of Ping An Fund, said the company adheres to an investment and research culture in which active and passive are consistent. This enables active research capabilities to power the development and tracking of index products, forming an investment companionship with warmth. At key market nodes, it provides clients with timing viewpoints and operation suggestions.

Sun Yu also said that for ETF businesses, in addition to supplying a rich set of ETF tools, Dacheng Fund is committed to providing investment research services on how to use these tools and how to construct combination allocations. For example, it publishes daily and weekly ETF investment outlooks, as well as ETF regular investment plans, grid trading, industry rotation and multi-asset allocation portfolio strategies.

During the transition process, technology has also become an important focus for some fund companies. Faced with investors’ pain points in the ETF space—“having products, no strategy” and “having tools, no allocation”—Tianhong Fund, leveraging its financial technology capabilities, has developed various intelligent tools covering the entire process of “fund selection, timing selection, trading,” applying digital-intelligent solutions into every link of its investment research, sales, and service systems.

At the day-to-day operations level of ETF products, Ping An Fund has independently developed the ETF intelligent investment operations platform “Oceanus system,” achieving end-to-end automation of investment, risk control, and performance attribution, controlling tracking error and reducing operational risks.

Industry insiders said that the unified renaming of ETFs is an important sign that the industry is moving toward maturity and rationality. With brand competition deepening, the industry will return to the fundamentals of asset management, focusing more on fine-grained and deep cultivation of ETF product competitiveness. Looking ahead, continuous diversification in ETF strategy types will become a major trend. Innovative products such as actively managed ETFs and multi-asset ETFs are expected to emerge, and institutions with brand advantages and strong ecosystem-building capabilities may gain the initiative in competition in the multi-trillion-yuan ETF market.

(Editor: Nan Nan)

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