The race for dominance over the ETF market share between BlackRock and Vanguard Group has been shifting in favor of the Malvern-based investment giant, writes Jeff Benjamin for etf.com.

New York-based BlackRock’s iShares brand has $2.79 trillion in 417 ETFs in the U.S. and $3.84 trillion globally in 1,147 ETFs.

Meanwhile, Vanguard’s U.S. ETF footprint comes out to $2.65 trillion in 86 ETFs and its global business has a footprint of $2.84 billion in 185 ETFs.

This means that Vanguard is reducing BlackRock’s market share lead at a rather steady pace.

BlackRock’s ETF business is currently around $146 billion larger than Vanguard’s after the Chester County company shrunk the gap by $113 billion in the last year.

A major reason for that trend is inflows. Vanguard pulled in over $122 billion so far this year, nearly double the $62 billion that BlackRock brought in.

Vanguard achieved this despite some controversy over its brokerage platform.

“If we look at Vanguard the asset manager, there hasn’t been a lot of controversy there,” said Jeff DeMaso, editor of The Independent Vanguard Advisor. “They’re still low cost and trusted, and people moving away from the Vanguard brokerage are still holding Vanguard funds.”

Read more about Vanguard coming into being in a more dominant position at etf.com.

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