The Australian ETF industry seems to be growing faster by the day, and one of the ETFs you might have your eye is the Vanguard FTSE Asia Ex-Japan Shares Index ETF (ASX: VAE). In this article, we’ll provide a quick review of the VAE ETF.
1. Exposure
The Vanguard VAE ETF provides exposure to a portfolio of companies listed in Asia, excluding Japan, Australia and New Zealand. As the ETF is not hedged, investors are also exposed to currency fluctuations.
2. Funds under management (FUM)
The Vanguard VAE ETF had $191.6 million of money invested when we last pulled the monthly numbers. Given VAE’s total funds under management (FUM) figure is over $100 million, the ETF has met our minimum criteria for the total amount of money invested, otherwise known as FUM. We draw the line at $100 million for ETFs in the International shares sector because we believe that relative to smaller ETFs, achieving this amount of FUM de-risks the ETF.
3. Management fees & costs matter
Vanguard charges investors a yearly management fee of 0.4% for the VAE ETF. This means that if you invested $2,000 in VAE for a full year, you could expect to pay management fees of around $8.00.
For context, the average management fee (MER) of all ETFs covered by Best ETFs Australia on our complete list of ASX ETFs is 0.51% or around $10.20 per $2,000 invested. Keep in mind, small changes in fees can make a big difference after 10 or 20 years.
What now?
These are just some of the considerations or factors you would need to consider when weighing up the VAE ETF. If you’re looking to do some further digging, be sure to read our Vanguard VAE report – it’s free. While you’re at it, don’t forget to search our complete list of ASX ETFs. You can filter the results according to sector, issuer, size, and more.
[ls_content_block id=”4954″ para=”paragraphs”]