ETF Huaxia "Real-Name Authentication"! ETF Giant's Competition Enters "Brand Era"

Questioning AI · How Do Major ETF Firms Play Differentiation in the Brand Era?

Leading public fund companies in ETF management scale have officially announced the renaming of all their ETFs. Over 120 ETF products under their management have all achieved “Real-Name Certification” by ETF Huaxia.

On March 23, Huaxia Fund released the second batch of ETF renaming announcements. Since then, all ETFs under Huaxia Fund have been real-name certified. The abbreviated names follow a unified naming structure of “Core Investment Target Elements + ETF Huaxia,” with fund codes and other names remaining unchanged.

Currently, Huaxia Fund manages a total of 122 ETFs, covering core broad-based indices, hot industry/themes, commodities, domestic and international markets, and strategy indices. After real-name certification, what should investors do if they find the ETF holdings have suffixes in their names? In fact, only the names have been upgraded; everything else remains unchanged. What if there are too many ETFs tracking the same index? Real-name certified ETFs Huaxia can quickly help lock in and simplify selection. Want to follow hot tracks? Real-name certified ETFs Huaxia allow you to catch the trend whenever it arises. Investors only need to input keywords like “target index” to precisely locate relevant ETFs.

This is not Huaxia Fund’s first renaming action. As early as January 12 this year, the company launched a centralized renaming of the first batch of 38 ETFs. Now, as this regulatory-driven, industry-responsive standardization process nears completion, the ETF market, with a total scale exceeding 6 trillion yuan, is entering a new era of unified rules, transparent information, and orderly competition. Standardized naming enhances the product’s “business card,” but beneath the card, the competition for trust and value remains endless.

As industry competition shifts from product quantity and scale expansion to continuous quality improvement, refined investment strategies, and service capabilities centered on investor experience, leading institutions’ practices serve as valuable benchmarks.

Countdown to ETF Naming Standardization

Since the CSRC issued the “Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Index Investment in Capital Markets” in 2025, a series of supporting measures have been implemented to break bottlenecks in index product supply. An upgrade of infrastructure aimed at increasing market transparency and efficiency is accelerating across the industry.

One key step is that in November of the same year, the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges revised and issued the Fund Business Guidelines, setting a strict deadline: all existing ETFs must complete standardized renaming of their abbreviated names by March 31, 2026. The format is uniformly specified as “Core Investment Target + ETF + Fund Manager Abbreviation.”

As March approached this year, with the final deadline for name standardization nearing, the “renaming wave” in the ETF market intensified. According to incomplete statistics, in just this month, more than ten fund companies—including Huaxia, E Fund, Harvest, Huaxia, Huatai-PineBridge, and Invesco Great Wall—announced changes to their ETF abbreviations.

Looking back at China’s ETF “meteoric rise” in 2025, the market rapidly surpassed 4 trillion, 5 trillion, and 6 trillion yuan in total scale, ultimately topping the Asian market with over 6 trillion yuan.

This scale exceeds 5% of the total A-share market capitalization and accounts for over 15% of total public fund assets. As ETFs accelerate past other asset classes, their development is no longer just about industry trends but increasingly about their low cost, high transparency, and high efficiency, making them an essential tool for asset allocation.

However, during the explosive growth of the ETF market in the past, similar product names and unclear manager identifiers were common, which increased the difficulty for investors—especially individual investors—in recognition and posed potential operational risks.

Industry insiders believe that this current move toward clearer, more “self-explanatory” naming is an important institutional arrangement to improve overall transparency and standardization, promoting the long-term healthy development of the ETF market.

For investors, clearer and more intuitive product names make the “origin” and “lineage” of each ETF immediately apparent, greatly reducing information filtering and comparison costs, and improving trading and asset allocation efficiency.

On a deeper level, explicitly including the manager’s identity in the product name means that institutions must accept long-term professional conduct and traceable market records, subjecting themselves to dual supervision by investors and the market. When “whose product” becomes as important as “what product,” the reputation of the manager, long-term operational capability, and the practice of “investor-centric” principles will be subjected to longer-term scrutiny.

In fact, for multiple ETFs tracking the same index, investors tend to prefer larger or more recognizable brands. Industry experts point out that leading institutions are naturally more proactive in renaming initiatives. Renaming not only helps investors distinguish similar products and highlight differentiation but also aids fund companies in marketing and strengthening ETF branding.

Major ETF Firms Battle for “Brand Power”

ETF standardization is the first step in institutional development, but its ultimate effectiveness depends on the continuous value creation by managers. This “value” is reflected not only in product creation but also in systematic operational capabilities, risk control, and investor service quality during long-term management.

In other words, under the new ETF naming system, public fund managers are entering a new stage of market competition. Moving beyond traditional issuance and sales, enhancing service experience and strengthening investor education have become new keys to sustained success.

Over the past five years, China’s ETF industry resources have increasingly concentrated among top players, with the top ten managers maintaining a highly stable core group. Huaxia Fund has consistently led in scale.

Wind data shows that by the end of 2025, Huaxia Fund’s ETF management scale grew from about 187.9 billion yuan at the end of 2020 to 957 billion yuan, an increase of over four times. During the same period, its equity ETF management scale exceeded 930 billion yuan.

Based on average annual scale, since launching China’s first domestic ETF—the SSE 50 ETF—in 2004, Huaxia Fund has maintained the industry’s top position for 21 consecutive years.

This sustained leadership over two decades is supported by strategic focus and systemic capabilities. Looking at Huaxia Fund’s recent development, ETF business has always been a key engine for overall growth and a strategic pillar for consolidating and enhancing its industry position.

Whether in index selection or product design, Huaxia Fund’s participation in the ETF market has been consistently forward-looking. Starting with the SSE 50 ETF, the product lineup has expanded rapidly. By the end of 2025, it managed 117 ETFs, remaining the industry leader.

Meanwhile, Huaxia’s product matrix is not just about quantity but about building a comprehensive asset allocation network—from core broad indices (like CSI 300, CSI 500), to industry and thematic funds (like new energy, chips, AI), to commodities (like gold), and overseas markets (like Hang Seng Tech, Nasdaq 100). With passive investment surging, Huaxia’s long-standing product, scale, and ecosystem advantages in ETFs are now fully realized.

On a “one-stop” allocation basis, Huaxia not only aims to provide high-quality products but also builds an investor education ecosystem through service empowerment.

In late 2024, Huaxia launched China’s first comprehensive online platform focused on index investing—the Red Rocket—and upgraded it twice by 2025. This platform offers various fund data, indicator references, historical backtesting, multi-asset management, and strategy templates. Its modular “building block” approach helps investors better visualize holdings, verify investment ideas, and support asset allocation.

Recently, Huaxia’s CEO Li Yimei stated that the future ETF ecosystem will further evolve toward intelligence, personalization, and high efficiency: “ETF competition will focus on data capabilities and ecosystem efficiency. Fund companies need to deeply integrate cutting-edge technology with the entire business chain to drive product innovation, efficiency improvements, and service upgrades.”