Watch for American Century's [profile] new ETF team to expand in 2018.

Edward Rosenberg American Century Investments Senior Vice President, Head of ETFs

Ed Rosenberg, head of ETFs at the Kansas City, Missouri-based mutual fund shop, confirms that he's "interviewing for some sales roles" on his team.

"We're going to end up with four sales-type roles" supporting American Century's broader distribution force, Rosenberg told MFWire recently, and he's hiring in other areas, too. "My team of one right now will be expanding quickly."

Indeed, Rosenberg recently hired BlackRock veteran Matt Lewis as vice president and head of ETF implementation and capital markets. Rosenberg himself joined American Century in June.

On the product development side, Rosenberg confirms that American Century is working on both active and passive ETFs. And Rosenberg's looking at different structures, too: last month he unveiled a deal to license Precidian's ActiveShares in-development methodology for active, non-transparent ETFs.

"All structures are on the table ... We're going to look at the product first," Rosenberg says. "We're vehicle-agnostic. Once you have the idea of the product, you have to figure out what structure it fits."

"We just want to build products that clients need," Rosenberg adds. "That's led us to a little bit of a different process."

Rosenberg and his team "have to incorporate the DNA of who American Century is and what we do well" into the ETFs they build, he says. Quality, he says, is "an overriding theme."

In the ETF world, Rosenberg says, "fixed income is an under-served area," which gives American Century opportunity to stake out new territory. Yet he sees fewer gaps in the equity ETF space, leading him to work on products that work differently to secure better outcomes for investors, such as incorporating downside protection. 

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