The duo believe that the sector is growing and ETFs are the future of the financial industry.

Exchange-traded fund entrepreneurs Hector McNeil and Nik Bienkowski are to launch Europe’s first “white label” UCITS exchange traded funds platform.

HANetf will provide asset managers a way to enter the European UCITS ETF market without having to establish a full service business, the duo said in a statement.

The pair, who worked at WisdomTree Europe, are aiming to “disrupt the market by lowering the barriers to entry for asset managers through an innovative platform, which provides services including product development, compliance, capital markets, sales, marketing and distribution”.

“We passionately believe ETFs are the future of investment and still have a huge amount of growth ahead of them in Europe,” said Bienkowski, co-chief executive at HANetf. “Every asset managers should have an ETF strategy, yet they do not necessarily want to deal with the cost and burden of setting up a full services European ETF operation, and we feel we are uniquely positioned to utilise our experience within the ETF industry to enable others to enter the market.”

According to HANetf, Europe currently has the second largest ETF market in the world, behind the US, with just under $700 billion of assets under management.