Van Lanschot Kempen is preparing to enter the active ETF market through a new partnership with State Street Investment Management. The Amsterdam-based boutique, known for its smallcap and euro credit strategies, will rely on State Street’s infrastructure and distribution networks to launch its first exchange-traded funds within six to nine months.
The move reflects the growing appeal of active ETFs in Europe, where institutional investors and wealth managers are beginning to adopt the structure for its daily liquidity, transparency and operational efficiency. For Van Lanschot Kempen, the collaboration marks a strategic shift, bringing its specialised strategies to a broader European investor base.
“By providing access to our active strategies through ETFs, we can pursue a growth agenda. It opens a separate line of distribution to investors beyond the traditional segments we typically serve,” Erik van Houwelingen, board member of Van Lanschot Kempen, told Investment Officer.
Beyond the Netherlands
The Amsterdam group, which manages 150.6 billion euros in assets, is increasingly seeking clients outside its domestic base. In recent years it has expanded distribution into the UK, the Nordics, Germany, France and Switzerland. Active ETFs, backed by State Street’s established platform, are expected to accelerate that cross-border push.
Van Houwelingen emphasized that the ETF business will run alongside the group’s traditional mutual funds. The aim is not to replace existing funds but to offer investors an additional entry point into strategies such as European smallcaps and value.
“We want to be careful with the propositions we have for our existing client base,” he said, noting that specific strategies may be spun off into ETF form where there is sufficient market demand.
State Street’s role
For State Street, which manages more than 5,000 billion dollars in assets globally, the partnership offers another channel to deepen its presence in continental Europe. The Boston-based firm launched the world’s first ETF thirty years ago and has since built one of the largest ETF platforms worldwide.
“We are innovators in the ETF space. Having launched the first one 30 years ago, we like to think we know something about this,” said Ann Prendergast, head of Europe and the global client group at State Street Investment Management.
Fiscal edge in Ireland
The new products will be domiciled in Ireland, under State Street’s ETF infrastructure. Unlike Van Lanschot Kempen’s existing Luxembourg-domiciled mutual funds, this structure comes with a fiscal advantage for investors in U.S. equities. Thanks to Ireland’s tax treaty with the United States, withholding tax on dividends from U.S. companies is 15 percent, compared with up to 30 percent in other European domiciles.
For institutional investors in particular, that difference makes ETFs an attractive alternative. While fee compression across the industry has sharpened the focus on costs, Van Houwelingen insisted the partnership is not primarily about margins. Rather, it is about meeting client demand for convenience, flexibility and efficient distribution.
Blackrock comparison
Asked whether the arrangement with State Street resembled the way Quintet or Rabobank work with Blackrock, Van Houwelingen drew a clear line. “No, a deal like this cannot be compared to those examples. We retain our fiduciary responsibility for private and institutional clients. But as a mid-sized firm, we cannot be the best at every element of the proposition, which is why we work with trusted partners,” he said.
Prendergast underlined that this partnership is also different from State Street’s service arrangements with firms such as Axa, Aberdeen and JP Morgan, where it mainly provides custody and administration for active ETFs. “We are State Street Investment Management, the investment arm of State Street, with our own ETFs and ETF infrastructure. This arrangement with Van Lanschot Kempen is different because we are bringing our investment management capabilities together in this partnership,” she said.
Prendergast said the collaboration is built on complementary strengths. “ETFs are becoming a primary product of choice for many different types of investors. Institutional investors who may not have used them in the past are increasingly including them in portfolios because they see the advantages of daily dealing, transparency and cost efficiency.”
Building on LDI
The relationship between the two firms is not new. In 2023, Van Lanschot Kempen appointed State Street as one of its preferred managers for liability-driven investment strategies in the UK. That cooperation covered both management and distribution of LDI products, providing what Van Houwelingen called an important learning curve.
“Our experience in bringing State Street on as one of our preferred LDI managers in the UK has brought us closer together and gave us a deeper understanding of each other’s capabilities,” he said.
Both sides describe the LDI mandate as a proving ground for trust and operational collaboration. That paved the way for today’s move into ETFs, which both parties present as the first step in a wider strategic alignment.
Future growth
The ETF launch is scheduled for the first half of 2026, but both firms stress that the partnership will not stop there. Van Houwelingen told Investment Officer the two organisations had already identified “five other areas” where they are exploring closer cooperation to develop additional solutions for their respective client bases, including in private markets, wealth management and outsourced CIO services.
Prendergast echoed the long-term ambition. “The foundation of this partnership is shared values and complementary capabilities. That makes today exciting, and we also see a runway for what more we can do together in the future.”