How ETFs Defined a Decade and Set the Stage for the Future of Financial Markets Innovation

Celebrating the 10^th Anniversary of the Tradeweb U.S. ETF Platform

There is no shortage of headlines about new technologies that are reshaping how financial markets operate. Tokenization is starting to go mainstream, new agentic AI models are influencing entire industries, and quantum computing continues to attract growing attention across financial markets.

While these innovations are having a meaningful impact on the way we approach investing today and how we position ourselves for the future, there has also been a quieter evolution that has helped define the last decade of transformation in financial services and lay the groundwork for future innovation.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have become a widely used, cost-efficient investment vehicle, enabling institutional investors to express market views, transfer risk and access liquidity across a broad range of market environments. Last year, industry U.S. ETFs saw a record in inflows, bringing total assets to more than $13.5 trillion. Current projections suggest that the global ETF market will reach nearly $30 trillion by 2033.

At their core, ETFs are connectors - linking asset classes, liquidity pools and market participants with minimal friction. In many ways, that same principle underpins Tradeweb's approach: building electronic solutions that connect markets, participants and products efficiently and transparently.

As Tradeweb marks the 10-year anniversary of its U.S. ETF trading platform, this piece looks back at the evolution of institutional ETF trading and the market dynamics that have shaped its growth.

The Swiss Army Knife of Institutional Investing

While a significant portion of ETF growth has been driven by individual investors seeking lower-cost alternatives to mutual funds, the utility of the ETF has hardly been lost on the institutional markets. Since launching our U.S. ETF trading platform, we've executed $3.8 trillion in total trading volume, including a record $930 billion just last year, across a growing base of close to 200 clients globally.

The appeal of ETFs among institutional investors is rooted in the same fundamentals that drove their broader adoption. ETFs provide instant exposure to a broad range of securities with lower transaction costs and, in some cases, better overall liquidity than the underlying securities themselves. For institutional market participants, these benefits are increasingly important amid rising expectations around pricing quality, efficiency, transparency and best execution.

But these types of volume increases were not driven by cost-savings alone. ETFs have also proven themselves to be effective liquidity and risk management tools during periods of elevated market volatility.

This dynamic was evident in March 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 market disruption, when ETF volumes on Tradeweb's U.S. platform surged 242% year-over-year as institutional market participants sought efficient ways to source liquidity. A similar pattern emerged in April 2025, following the tariff announcement, which caused volatility to spike and sent investors into a flight to safety pattern. This time, total notional volume on the platform rose by 110% year-over-year as clients responded to the market shock.

A Proving Ground for New Technology

Electronic trading has also played a major role in supporting the continued evolution of institutional ETF trading. One significant development has been the increased adoption of automated trading on Tradeweb's ETF platform. Across January and February this year, 49% of U.S. ETF orders were executed via our Automated Intelligent Execution (AiEX) tool, which allows clients to pre-define execution parameters and automate how orders are routed and timed based on market conditions, compared to just 15% this time last year.

Over the past five years, AiEX volume on the Tradeweb platform has grown by 306%, including a 257% increase from 2024 to 2025. Over the same period, the number of clients using AiEX has risen by 281%, with 116% growth between 2024 and 2025. Importantly, the number of large trades comprising orders over 100,000 shares executed via AiEX increased by 95% from 2024 to 2025, underscoring growing client comfort and trust in the platform for higher-value executions.

Tradeweb has also expanded its ETF trading capabilities with functionality such as ETF SNAP dealer selection tool, which dynamically selects dealers based on buy-side client-defined criteria, including real-time axes, historical hit and quote rates and size buckets. These enhancements are designed to support more consistent execution outcomes across varying market conditions.

Ongoing refinements to the electronic ETF trading workflow have contributed to broader connectivity across markets and asset classes. In 2025, we saw increased activity on our platform in adjacent markets such as futures, which grew by 73% year-over-year, signaling the increased penetration of our ETF platform across asset classes.

A Foundation for Future Innovations

As financial markets enter a new phase of development - shaped by advances in digital assets, automation and AI-driven analytics - the flexibility and efficiency established in institutional ETF markets will remain an important foundation.

Just as ETFs connect markets and liquidity across asset classes, Tradeweb continues to strengthen the electronic links between participants and products - reducing friction and supporting resilient market structure in the decade ahead.