The chief of an ETF shop with $6 billion in AUM sees a lot of opportunity to develop products "where there hasn't been a lot of innovation."

"We are able to be more innovative than some of the bigger shops out there and also able to build bespoke solutions," Vince Birley, CEO of Atlanta-based Vident Financial, tells MFWire.

Vident offers its own proprietary ETF line, with about $2 billion in AUM, through ETF-in-a-box shop Exchange Traded Concepts (ETC). And Vident also subadvises about $4 billion in outside ETFs.

Last month the expanding ETF shop launched its latest proprietary ETF, this one in the real estate space. Looking ahead, Birley says he's potentially interested in building ETFs focused on commodities, hard assets, or fixed income.

"There might be more opportunities in the future to build some of those solutions," Birley says.

Yet he cautions that the firm does not take a Field of Dreams approach to product development.

"We don't just build it and hope they come," Birley says. "We talk to different wealth management shops to see if they'd be interested in the products. That's also important to us to know that there's actually an interest and not just a hope." 

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