Absa Capital (the investment banking division of Absa Bank Limited, and affiliate to Barclays Capital) is a leading provider of ETFs in the South African market and is credited for several innovations and market-firsts in the ETF space – the first ETF based on a customised, equally weighted index (the NewRand ETF), the first, and still the only, commodity backed ETF in SA (the NewGold ETF), the first family of ETFs based on fundamental indexation (eRAFI™ ETFs), as well as the first and only family of multi-asset ETFs in SA (MAPPS™ ETFs).
It strives to offer investors low-cost, convenient and innovative alternatives to traditional investment products. In particular, Absa Capital’s strategic focus is to provide simple, targeted and cost-effective beta (market benchmark indices) and beta-plus (“smart” indices, style and thematic indices, investment strategies) investment building blocks for institutional investors.
To this end, Absa Capital has created a series of five Component ETFs that are now available to investors. The Component ETFs were designed to offer investors cost-effective access to major asset classes – equities, nominal bonds, inflation linked bonds and money market, as well as to investment themes / risk factors (e.g., equity momentum).
The ILBI ETF is a product, providing investors with a convenient and cost-efficient way to get exposure to performance of de facto SA Government inflation bond benchmark index - the Barclays Capital/Absa Capital South African Government Inflation-linked Bond index (the ILBI Index).
The ILBI Index is a total return index comprising SA bonds issued by the South African government that are linked to the South Africa Consumer Price Index .