Canadian ETF launches cost roughly $100,000 on an existing platform, and complex or bespoke products cost “materially more,” according to a new report.sorbetto/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
There was a record number of new Canadian ETFs launched last year, and more than 200 have already come to market in 2026. But launching and keeping those products running can be expensive for asset management companies.
Canadian ETF launches cost roughly $100,000 on an existing platform while complex or bespoke products cost “materially more,” according to a recent TD Securities Inc. report.
Furthermore, the report also estimates that a small ETF with about $10-million in assets under management (AUM) would incur ongoing expenses of about $100,000 a year.
Using $100,000 as a proxy for average annual operating expenses, the report’s authors estimated that 65 per cent of Canadian ETFs launched last year and 72 per cent of funds launched in 2024 earned enough management fee revenue in the first year of operation to cover those costs.
This estimate was based on an assumption that issuers absorbed expenses outside of the fund rather than passing them through the fund.
Casey Yang, director of ETF sales and strategy at TD Securities and a co-author of the report, says issuers will handle those costs differently. Firms issuing broad-beta ETFs are typically competing on fees and will usually absorb all the costs. But firms with novel or complex strategies will likely pass expenses through the ETF, increasing the management fee, or charge a separate administration fee.
“Each issuer has their own ways of managing the expense. They may make it different fund by fund, but in the end it’s all about competition,” Ms. Yang says.
ETF launch costs include regulatory filings and registration, legal and prospectus work, exchange listing fees, index licensing and fund administration, custody and transfer agent setup.
Some funds might require exemptive relief applications, which can cost at least $50,000 alone, and more complex funds might require customized disclosure, additional regulator engagement, portfolio monitoring and specialized custody or valuation arrangements, driving up the launch costs.
First-time issuers will see much higher costs, which the report estimated to be within the $1-million range, including establishing an asset management business and completing first-time documentation.
Jin Li, head of product at Global X Investments Canada Inc., says a significant portion of the company’s spending on a new fund is the “human capital” cost of time spent designing the strategy and working with the local portfolio manager team.
However, he notes the time and effort spent up front varies significantly between “plain vanilla” ETFs versus thematic, pure-play or novel ETFs such as an international basket with an options overlay.
For Global X, marketing to its three client segments – do-it-yourself investors, wealth advisors and institutionally sized clients such as family offices and institutional investors – is also a good chunk of its upfront spend, Mr. Li says.
Julian Klymochko, chief executive officer of Accelerate Financial Technologies Inc., an alternative ETF provider, says launch costs have come down “significantly” for new alternative ETFs in recent years and may even be in line with more straightforward products now that there’s precedent for a lot of novel strategies.
“The initial innovation added to the cost, but now that those have primarily been incorporated into the regulatory system, I don’t think there’s much of a differential,” he says.
White-label platforms can reduce costs for firms that want to launch an ETF without building complete fund management infrastructure from scratch, Ms. Yang says.
These platforms give firms access to regulatory registration, compliance, operational infrastructure and established service provider relationships. Although she notes they lower the barrier to entry, firms still need to gather sufficient assets after launch to cover ongoing costs.
An ETF maker’s ongoing operational costs typically include fund administration and custody, audits, regulatory filings, exchange fees, paying a transfer agent and distribution expenses. The TD Securities report said ETFs with higher assets under management and more complex strategies can see operating costs exceed $500,000 a year.
Mr. Klymochko estimated a low-cost index ETF would need AUM in the nine figures to become profitable relative to ongoing costs, while an alternative ETF with a higher management fee could be run profitably with AUM in the low eight figures.
Mr. Li says Global X’s “psychological threshold” for AUM in new funds is $25-million to $30-million, although that varies depending on whether it’s launching a thematic fund or a broader fund for which the company wants to be a cost leader.
Ms. Yang says profitability is important to ETF issuers, but if a new fund doesn’t have enough AUM to cover ongoing costs, they’ll consider other factors when weighing whether to keep it going, such as asset-gathering momentum, distribution opportunities and whether the ETF plays a strategic role in their broader product lineup.
She also notes many Canadian ETFs are ETF series of mutual funds.
“Even if the ETF is a bit smaller, a lot of issuers might want to keep it alive because it belongs to a bigger fund and there’s a much bigger asset base to spread the costs [across],” she says.
Mr. Klymochko says some issuers launch as many ETFs as possible, or capitalize on a particular trend in the market, expecting that some won’t land and keep only the ones that generate enough AUM. He says Accelerate is “deliberate and careful” with new fund launches.
“Every fund we launch, we aim to have it be successful,” he says. That means only pursuing strategies in which the company has enough expertise and that it believes will have attractive risk-adjusted returns for clients and enough market demand.
Mr. Li says Global X’s product development pipeline includes “demand-based” products based on what it hears from its salesforce and marketing department surveys, and it’s able to project the AUM profile of those products.
Its more innovative funds, based on where the company thinks the market is going, “are harder to project AUM-wise, but of course if the puck is indeed going in that direction we’ll see it reflected in the AUM,” he says.
Longer lifespans
Despite the flurry of launches in recent years, ETF delistings in Canada haven’t kept pace, according to National Bank Financial Inc. (NBF) data. In a recent report, it found that Canadian ETF delistings peaked in 2023 and have eased since.
In the U.S., the proliferation of single-stock leveraged ETFs and other specialty products has brought the average age of a delisted ETF down to 2.3 years compared with 4.5 years in Canada.
“Closure activity [in Canada] also appears less closely tied to product type and more influenced by idiosyncratic, issuer-specific factors, including some cases in which providers have exited the ETF market entirely,” the NBF report said.
That said, thematic ETFs, such as those focused on innovation, cannabis and genomics, are more likely to struggle when enthusiasm for a specific theme fades. And ETFs whose assets are highly concentrated with a single institutional investor are also more vulnerable, the report said.
“As the pace of ETF launches increases, periodic waves of closures are likely to remain a normal part of a growing and increasingly competitive market,” it said.