Charles Schwab Eyes ETF Expansion. What's in The Pipeline. -- Barrons.com

By Andrew Welsch

BOSTON -- Charles Schwab's asset management unit sees room to further expand its lineup of 34 proprietary exchange-traded funds by adding new bond and income funds, says Omar Aguilar, CEO and CIO of Schwab Asset Management.

"We have spent the last few years basically building the lineup," he tells Barron's at Impact, Schwab's annual conference for registered investment advisors. Fixed income, and in particular actively managed fixed income, is an area where Schwab thinks it could provide value to investors, he says.

The company's most recent addition to the roster came last week with the launch of the Schwab International Bond ETF (SCIN). The fund has an expense ratio of 0.06% and is intended to provide investors with access to the international investment-grade bond market. It tracks a global index called the ICE Global Broad Market Excluding-USD RIC Capped Free-Float Index (USD Hedged).

In addition to bonds, Schwab is eyeing opportunities to add to its income fund lineup, Aguilar says, noting that the company's Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD) has proved popular with investors. SCHD is the 10th best-selling ETF this year, according to Lipper's data. The fund has a total expense ratio of 0.06% and has $118 billion in total net assets as of Oct. 28.

"When we designed that product our focus was finding high-quality companies that consistently pay dividends," Aguilar says. The new funds will offer something a bit different, he says.

Schwab's ETF push comes as the U.S. ETF industry has drawn in massive flows of new money -- more than $1.5 trillion in new assets in the first nine months of the year, according to data from Lipper. Investors like the ease and generally low cost of ETFs, Aguilar says, adding that adoption continues to grow, especially outside of the U.S.

This year, index funds have been big winners. Lipper says the best-selling ETF for 2026 so far is Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, which has raked in estimated net inflows of $91.4 billion. But actively managed products are also drawing in significant assets. Lipper estimates that active ETFs gathered net inflows of $538.4 billion.

Bond ETFs have gained favor with investors, bringing in $467.7 billion this year, according to Lipper.

Asset managers have been launching hundreds of new ETFs in recent years to meet investor demand. Vanguard has unveiled a slew of active and passive bond ETFs, seeing fixed income as a new avenue of growth for the asset manager. Vanguard was the best-selling ETF provider in the U.S. so far this year with $386.2 billion in new assets, putting it ahead of BlackRock's iShares ($317.1 billion) and State Street SPDR ($124 billion). Schwab had $55.6 billion in new assets, according to Lipper.

Schwab's asset management unit has about $1.9 trillion in assets, Aguilar says. In addition to ETFs, the unit provides investors and advisors with other investment products and strategies, such as direct indexing. In June, Schwab reduced fees on four equity index ETFs, with expense ratios dropping by 0.01 to 0.02 percentage points.

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 29, 2026 16:00 ET (20:00 GMT)