CHICAGO, Nov. 18, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innovator Capital Management, LLC (Innovator) today announced that the fast-growing ETF sponsor and pioneer of the Defined Outcome ETFs™ won three categories at the 28th annual Mutual Fund Industry and ETF Awards put on by Fund Intelligence in October. The awards were based on submissions covering activity during calendar year 2020.
“We’re honored to have such a strong showing at this year’s Mutual Fund Industry and ETF awards,” commented Bruce Bond, CEO and Co-founder of Innovator. “This recognition from our peers in the asset management world is further affirmation of our vision in building the first and the largest lineup of Defined Outcome ETFs™ in the industry, which is to seek to help investors look forward by providing known potential ranges of investment outcomes prior to allocating capital. Solving for advisors’ unique needs and challenges is Innovator’s motivation, and we look forward to continuing to be a trusted, preferred partner for so many leading fiduciaries and wealth professionals.”
Firstly, Innovator won the new category “Sales Success of the Year – ETFs” for its Defined Outcome ETFs™. The award is a testament to robust advisor demand for the sponsor’s growing Defined Outcome ETF™ lineup during the pandemic as well as the dedication of Innovator’s team of consultants and wholesalers to serving clients during a truly historic year. The finalists for this sales recognition category included Global X, Simplify and VanEck.
Secondly, Innovator won “Alternative ETF of the Year” for its lineup of U.S. Equity Power Buffer ETFs™. The 12 monthly U.S. Equity Power Buffer ETFs™ are the most popular strategy by assets ($2.3 billion1) in the flagship U.S. Equity Buffer ETF™ lineup. The U.S. Equity Power Buffer ETFs™ seek to provide investors with upside participation, to a cap, in Large-cap U.S. stocks via options on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY)2 with buffers against market losses of 15% over one-year periods. The finalists for the Alternative ETF of the Year included Gadsden LLC & Alpha Architect, iM Global Partner and Nationwide.
As well, Innovator won the “Newcomer Alternative ETF of the Year” award, which is the third year in a row that the Defined Outcome ETF™ pioneer took the trophy in this category. This year, Innovator won the category for its Defined Outcome Bond ETFs™ TFJL and TBJL, which launched in August 2020 shortly after long-term U.S. Treasuries reached record low yields. Defined Outcome Bond ETFs™ seek to maximize the diversification benefits of bonds, capturing the upside performance of long-term government bonds, to a cap, with a built-in floor or buffer against loss. TBJL seeks to provide investors the upside performance of long-dated 20+ year U.S. Treasuries, to a cap, while providing a buffer against losses up to 9% over an annual period, while TFJL provides a floor against loss greater than 5% over a quarterly outcome period via options on iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT).
In the “Winners Report” issued October 29th, Fund Intelligence highlighted anonymous commentary from the independent judging panel about each category winner, noting for Newcomer Alternative ETF of the Year award that, “Innovator’s buffered ETFs made a huge splash and ignited a wave of product development – there is a strong continued opportunity for them to bring other types of options exposures to market, helping advisors manage return profiles. Scored based on a blend of factors, including flows, performance and innovation.”
The finalists for the Newcomer Alternative ETF of the Year were ASYMmetric ETFs, Changebridge Capital, Emles Advisors, KraneShares and Wilshire Phoenix.
Additionally, Innovator was shortlisted as a finalist for another five categories, including ETF Suite of the Year, Asset Manager Digital Tool of the Year, Newcomer Fixed Income ETF of the Year, PR Campaign of the Year and Newcomer ETF of the Year.
Since the 2018 launch of the Buffer ETFs™, the category-creating sponsor has systematically built out a diversified lineup of forward-looking strategies across a range of market exposures that can provide advisors an array of tools to help better match portfolios to investors’ risk tolerance levels, as well as seek to meet clients’ financial goals. Innovator has 76 Defined Outcome ETFs™ with over $5.3 billion in AUM3. This buildout has brought Innovator to the top of the fund launch league tables and, the sponsor believes, has led the ETF industry’s efforts to disrupt the multi-trillion-dollar risk management market, which is often home to more expensive, opaque, illiquid, credit-risk laden, and less tax-efficient investment vehicles.
Methodology of the Mutual Fund Industry and ETF Awards: This year’s categories and winners of the Mutual Fund Industry and ETF Awards were determined by an independent judging panel consisting of 14 asset management veterans, each a subject matter expert in their respective field. Also, the editors at Fund Intelligence interviewed industry leaders to solicit their opinions on potential nominees in certain categories. Winners were chosen based on multiple factors that the independent panel assessed, including innovation, sales success, market impact and uniqueness of approach.
Well over a thousand independent registered investment advisors (RIAs) and hundreds of other advisory firms have done their diligence and allocated to the various offerings in the Defined Outcome ETF™ family and Innovator anticipates large national wealth management platforms to follow suit in time. Notably, the Defined Outcome ETFs™ have demonstrated their operational and tax efficiency, totaling 93 rebalance events at the completion of a product outcome period.
The full list of winners can be viewed here.
About Innovator Defined Outcome ETFs™
Defined Outcome ETFs™ are the world’s first ETFs that seek to provide investors with known ranges of future investment outcomes prior to investing. These outcome ranges include multiple and single upside exposure, to a cap, with defined levels of downside risk with buffers and floors over a set amount of time. The Innovator Defined Outcome ETFs™ cover a large spectrum of domestic and international equities and bonds. Innovator’s category-creating Defined Outcome ETF™ family includes Buffer ETFs™, Stacker ETFs™, Floor ETFs™ and Accelerated ETFs™.
The Buffer ETFs™ seek to provide the upside performance of broadly recognized benchmarks (e.g., SPY, QQQ, IWM, EFA and EEM, as well as the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT)) to a cap, with built-in buffers, over an outcome period of one year. The ETFs reset annually and can be held indefinitely.
Each Buffer ETF™ in Innovator’s Defined Outcome ETF™ suite seeks to provide a defined exposure to a broad market benchmark where the downside buffer level, upside growth potential to a cap, and Outcome Period are all known, prior to investing. In 2019, Innovator began expanding its suite of U.S. Equity Buffer ETFs™ into a monthly series to provide investors more opportunities to purchase shares as close to the beginning of their respective Outcome Periods as possible.
Investors can purchase shares of a previously listed Defined Outcome ETF™ throughout the entire Outcome Period, obtaining a current set of defined outcome parameters, which are disclosed daily through a web tool available at: http://innovatoretfs.com/define.
Innovator is focused on delivering defined outcome-based solutions inside the benefit-rich ETF wrapper, retaining many of the features that have contributed to the success of structured products4 (e.g., downside buffer levels, upside participation, defined outcome parameters), but with the added benefits of transparency, liquidity, the elimination of credit risk5 and lower costs afforded by the ETF structure.
About Innovator Capital Management, LLC
Awarded ETF.com's "ETF Issuer of the Year - 2019"*, Innovator Capital Management LLC (Innovator) is an SEC-registered investment advisor (RIA) based in Wheaton, IL. Formed in 2014, the firm is currently headed by ETF visionaries Bruce Bond and John Southard, founders of one of the largest ETF providers in the world. Bond and Southard reentered the asset management industry to bring to market first-of-their-kind investment opportunities, including the Defined Outcome ETFs™, products that they felt would change the investing landscape and bring more certainty to the financial planning process. Innovator’s category-creating Defined Outcome ETF™ family includes Buffer ETFs™, Floor ETFs, Stacker ETFs™ and the Accelerated ETFs™. Buffer ETFs™ and Floor ETFs™ seek to provide investors structured exposures to broad markets, where the upside growth potential, buffer or floor against the downside, and outcome period are all known, prior to investing. Accelerated ETFs™ are the world’s first ETFs to seek to offer a multiple of the upside return of a reference asset, up to a cap, with approximately single exposure on the downside over an outcome period. Having launched the first Defined Outcome ETFs™ in 2018 -- the flagship Innovator U.S. Equity Buffer ETF™ Suite – Innovator’s solutions allow advisors to construct diversified portfolios with known outcome ranges to aid in risk management and financial planning. Built on a foundation of innovation and driven by a commitment to help investors better control their financial outcomes, Innovator is leading the Defined Outcome ETF Revolution™. For additional information, visit www.innovatoretfs.com.
Media Contact
Paul Damon for Innovator ETFs
+1 (802) 999-5526
paul@keramas.net
The Funds have characteristics unlike many other traditional investment products and may not be suitable for all investors. For more information regarding whether an investment in the Funds is right for you, please see "Investor Suitability" in the prospectus.
Innovator ETFsTM, Defined Outcome ETFTM, Buffer ETFTM, Accelerated ETFTM, Enhanced ETFTM, Stacker ETFTM, Define Your FutureTM, Leading the Defined Outcome ETF RevolutionTM and other service marks and trademarks related to these marks are the exclusive property of Innovator Capital Management, LLC.
There is no guarantee the funds will achieve their investment objective.
Investors purchasing shares after an outcome period has begun may experience very different results than funds' investment objective. Initial outcome periods are approximately 1-year beginning on the funds' inception date. Following the initial outcome period, each subsequent outcome period will begin on the first day of the month the fund was incepted. After the conclusion of an outcome period, another will begin.
The Fund only seek to provide shareholders that hold shares for the entire Outcome Period with their respective buffer level against reference asset losses during the Outcome Period. You will bear all reference asset losses exceeding the buffer. Depending upon market conditions at the time of purchase, a shareholder that purchases shares after the Outcome Period has begun may also lose their entire investment. For instance, if the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has decreased in value beyond the pre-determined buffer, an investor purchasing shares at that price may not benefit from the buffer. Similarly, if the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has increased in value, an investor purchasing shares at that price may not benefit from the buffer until the Fund's value has decreased to its value at the commencement of the Outcome Period.
Fund shareholders are subject to an upside return cap (the "Cap") that represents the maximum percentage return an investor can achieve from an investment in the funds' for the Outcome Period, before fees and expenses. If the Outcome Period has begun and the Fund has increased in value to a level near to the Cap, an investor purchasing at that price has little or no ability to achieve gains but remains vulnerable to downside risks. Additionally, the Cap may rise or fall from one Outcome Period to the next. The Cap, and the Fund's position relative to it, should be considered before investing in the Fund. The Funds' website, www.innovatoretfs.com, provides important Fund information as well information relating to the potential outcomes of an investment in a Fund on a daily basis.
The Funds' investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses should be considered before investing. The prospectus contains this and other important information, and it may be obtained at innovatoretfs.com. Read it carefully before investing.
Innovator ETFs are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC.
Copyright © 2021 Innovator Capital Management, LLC.
800.208.5212
1 Cumulative assets across all 12 U.S. Equity Power Buffer ETFs as of 11.01.21.
2 Upon each respective outcome period reset in 2021, all Equity Buffer ETFs™ from Innovator will transition from index-based to fund-based options. The U.S. Equity Buffer ETF lineup for December are yet to convert from index-based options and will do so at the reset of their next outcome period.
3 Assets under management as of 11.01.2021
4 Structured notes and structured annuities are financial instruments designed and created to afford investors exposure to an underlying asset through a derivative contract. It is important to note that these ETFs are not structured notes or structured annuities.
5 Defined Outcome ETFs are not backed by the faith and credit of an Issuing institution, so they are not exposed to credit risk.
