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

Securities Times reporter Pei Lirui

With the final batch of products completing their name changes, a landmark institutional adjustment in the ETF market has officially taken effect.

As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, more than 1,400 ETFs across the market have all adopted the standard format of “core elements of the investment target + ETF + the name of the manager” as exchange-traded abbreviations. This renaming wave, which took several months, is not only a concentrated implementation of regulatory requirements, but is also widely viewed in the industry as an important starting point for the ETF sector to enter the “brand era.”

All ETF renamings are fully rolled out

On March 31, a Penghua Fund announcement said that, after applying to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the company decided to change the exchange-traded abbreviations of 12 Shenzhen Stock Exchange ETFs under its management, effective immediately. At the same time, the company said that all 69 ETFs under Penghua Fund will fully adopt a unified identifier of “investment target + ETF Penghua,” and the “ETF Penghua” matrix has made its full debut.

This also means that the last fund company to complete the adjustment has officially wrapped up the process, and the exchange-traded abbreviations of ETFs across the market have achieved unified, standardized compliance.

Behind this renaming wave is the continued deepening of the regulators’ requirements for standardized naming of public funds. On November 19, 2025, the revised business guides issued by the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges—“Shanghai Stock Exchange Fund Business Guide No. 1—Business Processing,” and “Shenzhen Stock Exchange Securities Investment Fund Business Guide No. 1—Relevant Business Processing”—clearly require that expanded ETF abbreviations must be named according to the structure “core elements of the investment target + ETF,” and must include the fund manager’s abbreviation. Existing ETFs’ expanded abbreviations must include the fund manager and must complete product renaming by March 31, 2026.

Before the renaming, ETF abbreviations followed a “first come, first served” principle. For the same abbreviation, there could be one ETF on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, making it difficult for investors to distinguish which fund manager the product belonged to based solely on the name. For example, earlier, there were as many as 40 exchange-traded ETFs tracking the CSI A500 index. Among these 40 products, two products each used names such as “A500ETF fund,” “CSI A500ETF,” and “CSI A500 enhanced ETF.” In addition, there were also similar expressions such as “A500ETF index,” “A500ETF index fund,” and “CSI A500 leading ETF,” making it extremely easy for investors to suffer from “face blindness.”

After the renaming, this problem has been significantly improved. On the one hand, the manager identifier has been forced into the naming system. On the other hand, the expression of the investment target has also become more standardized and precise. For example, Penghua Fund’s “Double Innovation Leading ETF” is clearly defined as “Double Innovation 50ETF Penghua,” and CICC Credit Suisse Fund’s “50ETF fund” is clearly defined as “Shanghai-Shenzhen 50ETF CICC Credit Suisse,” greatly reducing the time cost of screening for investors.

Penghua Fund said that after the renaming, the exchange-traded ETF abbreviations are clearer, more concise, and easier to identify. They not only intuitively reflect the index tracked behind the exchange-traded ETF abbreviation, but also directly present the ETF product’s fund manager. This naming approach, which is self-explanatory, enables investors to identify product characteristics more quickly and accurately, improves investment decision efficiency, and will also promote the more sound and healthy development of the domestic ETF market.

A 5-trillion-yuan market makes competition fiercer

In recent years, the domestic ETF market has grown rapidly. As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, the total number of listed ETFs within China reached 1,476, with an aggregate scale close to 5 trillion yuan. When the number of ETFs enters the thousand-plus era, there may easily be a dozen or more products tracking the same index, and homogeneous competition has noticeably intensified.

At this stage, a competition model that relies solely on scaling up is gradually losing effectiveness. More and more fund companies have realized that simply racing to grow in size and to offer fee rates is no longer enough to sustain a long-term competitive edge. Competition in the industry has shifted from single-product competition to systematized brand competition.

HuaTai-PineBridge Fund said that product naming standardization not only helps build a clearer and fairer market environment, but also signals that the market is moving from a phase of pure 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 with long-term professional conduct and traceable market records. This helps strengthen the responsibility of the managers and pushes industry competition from the past single-dimension contest of scale and liquidity to upgrade into an all-round, systematized competition covering brand recognition, strategy depth, risk control, and investor services. Over time, a positive industry ecosystem will gradually form with investor interests at its core.

Guotai Fund also said that, as the ETF market scale continues to expand, the number of ETF products corresponding to the same index is becoming increasingly dense, significantly increasing the difficulty for investors to screen among massive product selections. Faced with the intensifying situation of homogeneous competition in the industry, fund companies urgently need to build clear brand discernibility and form differentiated competitive advantages. By directly linking the fund manager’s brand with ETF products, fund companies will be able to better fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities in the future, further strengthen brand discernibility and a professional image, and provide investors with more trustworthy and stable index investment services.

In addition, the arrival of the brand era also indicates that the Matthew effect in the ETF market will intensify. After naming standardization, mini ETFs with serious homogeneity, poor liquidity, and too-small scale may accelerate their exit. For example, on March 12, Xinhua Dividend Low Volatility ETF released a liquidation announcement. As of February 5, the fund had recorded net asset value of the fund assets below 50 million yuan for 50 consecutive working days, triggering the termination clause of the fund contract.

Fund companies focus on brand value

As the tool attributes of ETFs become increasingly similar, true differentiation is also extending beyond the tools. 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 homogeneity intensifies, what we sell is not only products, but also the理念 behind product design and product layout, as well as the product solutions.” Pei Pei Guo, deputy general manager of the index and quantitative investment department and fund manager at E Fund, explained: “In the future, as the company’s number and scale of ETF products grow rapidly, the E Fund Index team will place even more focus on front-end product design and back-end service, further strengthening the E Fund brand value in ETF products.”

E Fund said that its index team is not simply tracking existing market indices. Instead, based on deep 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 sets. Its goal is to solve the real difficulties investors face when investing in index products across the entire market, providing solutions spanning before-investment—during-investment—and after-investment, rather than a single product.

The Hu’ an ETF team is dedicated to building a service system with asset allocation at its core. It firmly believes that asset allocation services are a key path connecting asset management and wealth management. Not only did it lead the industry in publishing six ETF asset allocation indices through an index company, but in an era of rapid development in the internet and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, it also released a “Building Block Planet” mini program to serve investors more efficiently, and has continued to iterate on content, modules, and efficiency.

HuaTai-PineBridge Fund said that earlier this year, when dividend strategies were relatively unfavorable, the company launched an interactive plan called “Dividend Time Grid.” When high premiums frequently appeared in cross-border ETFs, it delivered a timely message of rationality. These details may better show that the deep logic of branding is to allow investors, amid a plethora of choices, to find a clear anchor point they can entrust with for the long term, based on the clear identifier “ETF HuaTai-PineBridge.”

From the rollout of renaming compliance standards to the upgrade across competitive dimensions, the ETF industry is completing a key leap from tool expansion to system-level competition. In this process, scale and fee rates are no longer the only answer; brand and ecosystem are becoming the new dividing line.

(Editor: Dong Pingping ）

     【Disclaimer】This article only represents the author’s personal views and is not related to Hexun. The Hexun website maintains neutrality regarding the statements and opinions in the text and provides no express or implied guarantee regarding the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the included content. Readers are asked to rely on this information only as a reference and bear all responsibility themselves. Email: news_center@staff.hexun.com