ETF Rebranding Completes Across the Board, Elevating the 5 Trillion Market Competition

The Securities Times reporter, Pei Lirui

With the last batch of products completing their renaming, a landmark institutional adjustment in the ETF market has officially been implemented.

As of the end of Q1 2026, more than 1,400 ETFs across the entire market have all been put into operation using the standardized format of “core elements of the investment underlying + ETF + the asset manager’s name” as their exchange-traded shorthand. This renaming wave that took several months is not only a concentrated implementation of regulatory standardization, but is also widely viewed by industry participants as an important starting point for the ETF industry to enter the “brand era.”

All ETF renamings fully implemented

On March 31, Penghua Fund announced that, after applying to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the company decided to change the on-exchange shorthand of its 12 Shenzhen-listed ETFs effective immediately. At the same time, the company stated that all 69 ETFs under Penghua Fund have adopted a unified labeling of “investment underlying + ETF Penghua,” and the “ETF Penghua” matrix has made a full debut.

This also means that the final fund company that completed the adjustment has officially wrapped up its work, and the on-exchange ETF shorthands across the entire market have achieved unified and standardized naming.

Behind this renaming wave is the continued deepening of the regulator’s requirements for standardizing naming conventions for public funds. On November 19, 2025, the revised operational guidelines released by the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges—“Shanghai Stock Exchange Fund Business Guidelines No. 1—Handling of Business,” and “Shenzhen Stock Exchange Securities Investment Fund Business Guidelines No. 1—Handling of Relevant Business”—clarified that expanded ETF shorthands must be named according to the “core elements of the investment underlying + ETF” structure and must include the abbreviated name of the fund manager; existing stock ETFs’ expanded shorthands must include the fund manager and must complete the product renaming by March 31, 2026.

Before the renaming, ETF shorthands followed a “first come, first served” principle. The same shorthand could exist with one ETF on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, causing investors to find it difficult to distinguish product fund managers based solely on the name. For example, previously there were as many as 40 on-exchange ETFs tracking the CSI A500 index. Among these 40 products, there were two products each using names such as “A500 ETF Fund,” “CSI A500 ETF,” and “CSI A500 Enhanced ETF.” In addition, similar expressions such as “A500 ETF Index,” “A500 ETF Index Fund,” and “CSI A500 Leading ETF” also appeared, making it extremely easy for investors to be “name-confused.”

After the renaming, this problem has been significantly improved. On the one hand, the manager identifier has been forcibly incorporated into the naming system; on the other hand, the wording for the investment underlying has also become more standardized and precise. For example, the “STAR Market & GEM Leading ETF” under Huabao Fund is explicitly defined as the “STAR Market & GEM 50 ETF Huabao.” The “50ETF Fund” under Jianxin Fund is explicitly defined as the “SSE 50ETF Jianxin,” greatly reducing the time cost for investors to filter and select.

Huabao Fund stated that the on-exchange ETF shorthands after the renaming are clearer, more concise, and easier to recognize. They not only directly reflect the index tracked behind the on-exchange ETF shorthand, but also directly present the fund manager of the product. This naming approach, which is self-explanatory, allows investors to identify the product characteristics more quickly and accurately, improve decision-making efficiency, and also promote the development of a healthier and more sustainable domestic ETF market.

A more intense competition in the $5 trillion market

In recent years, the domestic ETF market has grown rapidly. As of the end of Q1 2026, the total number of ETFs listed domestically reached 1,476, with an aggregate size close to 5 trillion yuan. When the number of ETFs entered the thousand-plus era, with often more than ten products tracking the same index, homogenized competition has intensified significantly.

At this stage, the competition model that relies solely on scale expansion has gradually become ineffective. More and more fund companies have realized that simply “competing on scale” and “competing on fee rates” is no longer enough to sustain a long-lasting competitive edge. Industry competition has shifted from single-product competition to systematic, brand-based competition.

HuaTai-PineBridge Fund stated that standardized product naming not only helps build a clearer and fairer market environment, but also marks the market moving from a stage of plain scale expansion to a high-quality development stage of quality and brand competition. Specifically, writing the manager identifier clearly into the name means institutions must accept supervision by demonstrating long-term professional conduct and a traceable market track record. This helps to reinforce the responsibilities of the asset managers, and drives industry competition to upgrade from past single-dimension comparisons of scale and liquidity to an all-round systematic competition covering brand recognition, strategy depth, risk control, and investor services—gradually forming a favorable industry ecosystem centered on investors’ interests.

China Growth Fund (Guotai Fund) also said that as the ETF market continues to expand in size, ETFs corresponding to the same index are becoming increasingly dense, and the difficulty for investors to sift through massive numbers of products has increased significantly. Faced with intensifying homogenized competition in the industry, fund companies urgently need to build clear brand distinctiveness and form a differentiated competitive advantage. By directly linking the fund manager’s brand with the ETF product, fund companies in the future can better fulfill their trust responsibilities, further strengthen brand distinctiveness and professional image, and provide investors with more credible and stable index investment services.

In addition, the arrival of the brand era also suggests that the Matthew effect in the ETF market will intensify. After naming standardization, mini ETFs with serious homogeneity, poor liquidity, and excessively small scale may be cleared faster. For example, on March 12, Xinhua Dividend Low Volatility ETF issued a liquidation announcement. As of February 5, the fund had seen its net asset value fall below 50 million yuan for 50 consecutive working days, triggering the fund contract termination clause as agreed in the fund contract.

Fund companies focus on brand value

As ETF tool attributes become increasingly similar, true differentiation is also extending beyond the tool itself. This raises higher requirements for how fund managers can continuously optimize the service experience and precisely match ETF investors’ needs.

“When the number of index funds increases and homogenization intensifies, what we sell is not only the product, but also the concept behind product design and product layout, as well as the product’s solutions.” Guo Beibei, Deputy General Manager and Fund Manager at the Index and Quantitative Investment Department of E Fund, introduces: “In the future, with the rapid growth in the number and scale of the company’s ETF products, the E Fund index team will focus even more on the front-end design of products and the back-end services, further strengthening the E Fund brand value embedded in ETF products.”

E Fund stated that its index team is not simply tracking the existing indexes in the market. Instead, based on profound insights into the macroeconomy and industry cycles, it transforms active management experience into a series of rigorous, transparent, and replicable index rules and strategy solution plans. Its goal is to solve the real difficulties investors face when investing in index products across the entire market, and what it provides is a solutions framework spanning pre-investment—during-investment—post-investment phases, rather than a single product.

The An? (Hua An) ETF team is committed to building a service system centered on asset allocation. It believes that asset allocation services are the key path connecting asset management and wealth management. Not only has it been among the first in the industry to release six ETF asset allocation indexes through index companies, but in an era of rapid development of internet and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, it also launched the “Block Planet” mini program to serve investors more efficiently, and has continued to iterate on content, modules, and efficiency.

HuaTai-PineBridge Fund stated that when the company’s dividend strategy faced a relatively headwind early in the year, it rolled out an interactive plan called “Dividend Time Grid.” And when high overseas ETF premia appeared frequently, it conveyed a timely rational viewpoint. These details may more clearly show that the deeper logic of branding is enabling investors, amid a multitude of choices, to find a clear anchor by relying on the unambiguous label “ETF HuaTai-PineBridge.”

From the implementation of renaming standards to an upgrade in competitive dimensions, the ETF industry is completing a key leap from tool expansion to system-based competition. In this process, scale and fee rates are no longer the only answer, and brand and ecosystem are becoming the new watershed.

(Editor: Li Yue)

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