JPMorgan ties automation to $35T ETFs

JPMorgan said this week that automation is becoming core plumbing for the exchange-traded fund market, not a back-office upgrade. (jpmorgan.com) In an April 24 note, the bank’s securities-services team said global ETF assets are widely expected to reach $35 trillion by 2030, up from $19.5 trillion in 2025, citing PwC survey data. (jpmorgan.com) (pwc.com) Ciarán Fitzpatrick, JPMorgan’s global head of ETF Product in Securities Services, said ETFs are “driven by technology,” while Matthew Legg, the bank’s global head of Delta One and ETF Sales, said rising order counts and volumes are creating bigger gains from electronifying flow. (jpmorgan.com) JPMorgan’s argument is straightforward: more ETF orders, stricter trade-reporting rules, and tighter liquidity controls are making manual handling harder to document and harder to scale. Legg said technological platforms are becoming necessary as markets and regulation grow more complex. (jpmorgan.com) That message lands after a record year for the product itself. JPMorgan Asset Management said U.S. ETF trading volume hit $58.4 trillion in 2025, above the prior record of $46.5 trillion in 2022, while U.S. ETF flows topped $1.4 trillion. (am.jpmorgan.com) The pressure showed up again in April. After tariff announcements, daily ETF volume topped $400 billion for five straight days, reached a record $640 billion on April 7, and ETF trading rose to 43% of all equity trading that day, JPMorgan Asset Management said. (am.jpmorgan.com) JPMorgan is also tying the automation push to the rise of active ETFs, which it says have more complex operating set-ups than passive funds. Its asset-management arm said 83% of the more than 1,000 U.S. ETFs launched in 2025 were actively managed. (jpmorgan.com) (am.jpmorgan.com) PwC’s 2026 ETF survey gives the bank’s forecast more weight. PwC said global ETF assets reached $19.5 trillion at the end of 2025, and more than a third of respondents expect that figure to reach $35 trillion or more by June 2030. (pwc.com) JPMorgan’s note goes one step further and points to what comes after automation: tokenized ETFs and faster settlement. The bank said experimentation is growing, but tokenized ETFs have not yet reached the mainstream. (jpmorgan.com) For now, the immediate change is simpler. JPMorgan is telling clients that if ETF volumes keep climbing at 2025 and April 2026 levels, the firms that can automate trading, controls, and reporting will be the ones built for the next phase of the market. (jpmorgan.com) (am.jpmorgan.com)