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 SWIX 40 ETF is designed to track the performance of the FTSE/JSE SWIX 40 Total Return Index.The SWIX 40 index is a shareholder weighted Top 40 Index which makes use of the share register of the top 40 companies listed on the main board of the JSE and qualifying under the Ground Rules as being eligible for inclusion in the Index to reduce the constituent weights for foreign shareholders in these stocks. In addition, the SWIX 40 Index is adjusted for cross- holdings and strategic holdings. The impact is to reduce the weightings of mainly resource and dual-listed stocks in the Top 40 Index.