(Bloomberg) -- Investment manager MacKay Shields has launched an exchange-traded fund that will buy asset backed securities, mortgage bonds, and other investment-grade products in the structured finance market.
MacKay, which is owned by insurer New York Life, inaugurated the IQ MacKay Securitized Income ETF on May 31. As of Wednesday, the actively managed fund had assets of $86 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The goal is to give investors diverse exposure in an asset class that has very attractive yields, while also staying in higher quality credits,” said Zachary Aronson, a portfolio manager at MacKay Shields.
The fund will also buy products including collateralized mortgage obligations and commercial mortgage bonds.
With the exception of agency mortgage backed securities, structured finance markets have often been relatively illiquid. That can make it harder for an ETF fund manager to deal with investors looking to cash out of their funds when there are few buyers for the shares of the funds.
But ETFs have been entering the space. Last year saw the launch of at least 11 of the funds, including vehicles by BlackRock Inc. and DoubleLine Capital LP.
Part of the increase is due to Securities and Exchange Commission rules adopted in 2019, which modernized the regulatory framework for ETFs and made it cheaper and easier to bring the funds to market.
ETFs have proved especially popular in the market for collateralized loan obligations. There, a single ETF by Janus Henderson has reached $10 billion in assets.
