Vanguard Edges BlackRock for Bond ETF Crown

The Vanguard Group Inc. overtook BlackRock Inc. as the holder of the largest bond ETF in the U.S. market.  

As of Monday, the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND) weighed in at $83.75 billion in assets under management versus $83.2 billion for iShares Core Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG). Both funds rank among the top 10 U.S.-listed ETFs in terms of size.  

During the last 12 months, BND pulled in more than $13 billion in flows, while AGG gained just $4.6 billion.  

The two ETFs track very similar broad-based fixed income indexes from Bloomberg that have exhibited closely correlated performance and have the same ultra-low expense ratio of just 3 basis points. But Vanguard has been steadily gaining on iShares’ AUM for a while now.  

Currently, iShares has roughly $2.24 trillion in assets under management, while Vanguard has $1.93 trillion, a gap of $311 billion. That’s narrowed from a gap of roughly $389 billion at the start of the year, down from $418 billion 12 months ago and more than $500 billion two years ago. The trend has been fairly consistent. 

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Vanguard had overtaken BlackRock in total ETF assets.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]