##  [# From ESG to Options: 2025 Global ETF Industry Trends](/sections/advisor-center/esg-options-2025-global-etf-industry-trends) 

 

# From ESG to Options: 2025 Global ETF Industry Trends

 

 

The US ETF market is all-in on tech, but the world is changing fast! Discover why defense is the new ESG for global players, how crypto and options are becoming mainstream, and what the next market downturn could mean for the riskiest products in your brokerage account.



 

 

 

 

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[By ETF.com Staff](/contributors/etfcom-staff)

 Nov 18, 2025

 Edited by: ETF.com Staff

 

 

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Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor of ETF Express, joins Dave Nadig to dissect the biggest global ETF trends. Chandler reveals the surprising truth about ESG strategies and the options-based income boom driven by new retail savers. The discussion covers the massive growth of ETFs through robo advisors globally, the imminent flood of ETF share class products in the U.S., and why, ultimately, all major market shifts come down to technology.

**Full Transcript**

**Chandler:** And what I'm noticing is that they are all, the ETF industry is growing through robo advisor type distribution routes. It's a distribution, huge change in the model for how people invest across Europe and across the world.

**Nadig:** Bev Chandler, ETF Express. It's great to have you back here at ETF.com. Thanks for joining us.

##  2025 ETF Express Award Surprises

**Chandler:** Thank you so much for having me, Dave. It really nice to be chatting with you again.

**Nadig:** You guys have just finished your big ETF awards season for the year. I know, obviously one of the tent poles for the industry. What are the big surprises this year? You guys have been doing this for a long time.

**Chandler:** Thank you.

**Nadig:** Maybe let's just start with those big surprises

**Chandler:** I have observed that poor old ESG has taken a real battering, which seems timely. We just started COP30. And here we are with ESG, which is no longer quite the popular investment strategy it once was.

We had a winner, if I can say it, the fund that they won with on the Track Insight data is no longer an ESG fund. It had become a normal fund, so they just didn't want to be involved at all, which is the most definitive anti-ESG sentiment really that I've come across.

You can see that maybe in ‘20, probably it was probably peak just post COVID, which is probably a cultural thing that we inherited from COVID that we need to look after the world better or something. had peak ESG, which was everyone trying to keep the planet healthy. And that has completely disappeared. So probably between ‘21, ‘22 to ‘25, that is a much smaller part of the industry.

But of course it's been replaced by drum roll, I'm going to actually drum roll, options. mean, all these options, there are so many options based strategies and they're all producing income. And I think the most interesting thing I learned with one of our winners this year is NEOS Investments is that their research shows that people who are buying these options-based income strategies. No longer boomer candy but people who are just saving for a big holiday, or a car, or dental work, or whatever they want to save for. So that's a completely new phenomenon. I think I was quite surprised by that.

**Nadig:** Yeah, let's tease both of those apart. On the one hand, the sort of demise of ESG, you have a much broader view of the world that we tend to be pretty US-centric around here. I think we have this belief in the US that while ESG is alive and well throughout the rest of the world and Europe, because Europe has generally led the charge on ESG. What I'm hearing from you is it's fallen off there as well. Is that showing up in the asset flows and all the other numbers as well?

**Chandler:** Yeah, I think it's been an interesting phenomenon in Europe. What we are seeing is the defence ETFs, which have been huge here. We've now got an SFDR approved defence ETF from HAN ETF, which is a white labelled over here. So that is becoming a new phenomenon, and that is ESG. And that's probably being dictated by the fact that the big pension funds particularly in Northern Europe have to invest in an ESG manner.

And so we also had a managed futures ETF which was screened for a big Northern European pension fund, which was again ESG screened. So it is still alive here, but it's more of a US phenomenon, I guess, that it's completely not a big thing.

 
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## Insight Into Global ETF Industry Trends

**Nadig:** Got it. Because you are one of the few folks I know that has truly global court vision on what's going on the ETF market, what are you seeing that you find interesting that's different about the US market versus other markets? Like where are we seeing some some split there?

**Chandler:** Wow, yeah, it's such an interesting thing. So I think the big difference is distribution channels. So we just don't have those wirehouses, platforms here that you have. It's all a little bit of a mystery actually as well to outside, not in the US, as to how quite that all works. But across Europe, which obviously is my home borough as it were – but in fact, as you know, as we're global – and what I'm noticing is that they are all, ETF industry is growing through robo advisor type distribution routes. It's a distribution, huge change in the model for how people invest across Europe and across the world.

So the Japanese have a NISA, N-I-S-A, and we have an I-S-A, ISA, which is a tax-efficient savings plan, which can be backed by ETFs. And it's that sort of growth that we're seeing. Australia has been interesting for me because I thought it would be the supers, the big superannuation pension fund models that would be using ETFs. They're not, but you can have like a self-invested super in Australia. They are, so that could be mom and pop. Probably quite a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles, now, all with their own pool, which of course ETFs make it so much easier and cheaper to invest. Nowhere else.

**Nadig:** Interesting. That's such an interesting shift because in the US, had sort of in the 2010s, we had a big push of the robo advisor market and Wealthfront, Betterment, those kinds of folks. Now Vanguard has their own, and Schwab has their own, fidelity – everybody has their own version of it. And then the uptick sort of just capped out. It hasn't had the kind of real boom growth that we thought. You know, the products are great, right?

There's nothing – like, I think robo advisors are great solution for a lot of folks, but it just hasn't had the kind of uptick. And I'm wondering if that's a cultural gap, because meanwhile, all we've done in the US has just made everything gambling.

**Chandler:** I love that. Yeah, I think it's also just you have a better knowledge of investment. I mean, I think that we just don't seem to have. I don't know why. I'd love to know why. Maybe there's a sort of sense that we have more of a, like our pension scheme is managed for us at a government.

## ETF Share Class Implications and 2026 Industry Predictions

**Chandler:** The other thing we haven't discussed, which is the trend and the phenomenon, of course, which is now on hold, but ETFs as a share class, which we already have in Europe. I'm going to be a bit smug here.

**Nadig:** Right. You guys had that forever. But it's let you guys do a bunch of really interesting things. Like there's a bunch of stuff about the UCITS model that lets you, that we could adopt here. Particularly things like accumulating and distributing share classes, right, which we don't really have the equivalent of here in the US. But yeah, we're going to end up with this huge flood.

I mean, that's going to make the things like doing the awards even harder as well, because all of a sudden, not only are we going to have more product, but differentiating what sort of a pure ETF product and what's a spoke off something else, we'll have to decide whether we care, I guess, right? We have a few of them. We have some – we have what, 26 Vanguard funds that are that are off the back of mutual funds. But we're going to have twenty six hundred of those by the end of next year, probably.

**Chandler:** Easily.

**Nadig:** Before I let you go, I want to ask. I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. You're finishing up this process for 2025. What are your big predictions for 2026? I don't think it's too early to ask.

**Chandler:** So, yes, so as I said, I'm just doing that process now with these investors in ETFs, so sort of money managers and people who run portfolios of ETFs.

I think more active. I do think that we, I think actually we know, don't we? I think that with active is probably going to have to be better defined going forward. So I'm sure there are very clever people working on that as we speak.

Sadly, I don't think I see the return of ESG for a bit. I'm only saying sadly because I love our planet, but you know, it's not where the money is. Crypto, my goodness. I mean, that just keeps growing, doesn't it? And I'm fascinated and I suspect that the the options play isn't going away either. I think that will get more and more sophisticated.

**Nadig:** I wouldn't be surprised for there to be a bit of a comeuppance on some of the more degenerate hyper leverage product stuff. I would not be surprised to see that really slow down on a bunch of those products where those companies go under if we actually have a sustained downturn that lasts more than five days, which we don't seem to be able to do in the United States, which I'm not going to complain about. I'm long.

But the reality is without some sort of sustained downturn, nothing ever gets flushed. We know that. Like bad products don't disappear until we have a bad market. So that would be my only caveat. And honestly, I wouldn't bet against the US stock market. We just seem to be the Energizer bunny that just keeps on going.

**Chandler:** Yeah, it's technology really, it all comes down to technology. And I always think that's true of ETFs as well, in a way, and the different the change that happened. Change happened for me in the hedge fund industry in the same way, and that they could do much quicker, faster, more lively trading and managing of money because the technology improved. Same happens in the ETF industry. So let's just put it all down to tech.

**Nadig:** Yeah, it's all down to tech.There you go. There's your episode headline right now. Beverly, it's been absolutely so wonderful catching up with you.

**Chandler:** I've enjoyed it too. Thanks so much Dave.



 

 

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