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A customer is silhouetted as he walks through Fidelity Investments, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008, in Boston.Lisa Poole/The Associated Press

The Canadian arm of U.S. mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments is gearing up to enter the crowded market for exchange-traded funds, with the company on the hunt for an executive to develop ETFs to sell in this country.

Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, which manages more than $132-billion in mutual fund and institutional assets in Canada, has been quietly sitting on the sidelines as many of its Canadian competitors have launched in the ETF space over the last year.

But in a recent job post, the company said it is looking to hire an experienced vice-president who can create and implement an ETF strategy.

The initiative to bring an experienced ETF executive in-house started after financial advisers began asking the asset manager to provide ETF products, said Chris Pepper, Fidelity's vice-president of corporate affairs.

In the United States, Fidelity has been operating in the ETF market for more than a decade, managing more than $300-billion (U.S.) in assets in 21 funds. Its U.S. fund family includes bond, sector and factor-based ETFs and is sold through financial advisers, robo-advisers and directly to consumers.

In Canada, Fidelity entered the mutual fund market in 1987. Today, it's the fourth-largest player in the country with 179 mutual funds, which are sold through investment advisers almost exclusively (although a few Fidelity funds are available on discount brokerage platforms).

Despite the sales channel not being direct-to-investor in Canada, Fidelity – in both the Canadian and U.S. markets – has become a well-known brand among retail investors by highlighting star portfolio managers Joel Tillinghast and Will Danoff in advertising campaigns, which include billboards and TV commercials.

For the Canadian division, this strong brand recognition among retail clients could aid an ETF launch.

The Canadian ETF market has been rapidly growing, with 24 ETF providers managing $130-billion in assets, according to a recent report by National Bank Financial. That is up from only 10 providers managing $97-billion in assets in April, 2016. But the industry's boom is putting pressure on majority of Canada's mutual fund companies, including Fidelity, to offer products that can remain competitive with lower cost pricing for investors.

Over the past year and a half, seven of Canada's largest asset managers – including AGF Management Ltd., Manulife Financial Corp. and Franklin Templeton – decided to step out of their comfort zone to add ETF products to their fund lineups.

Similar to Fidelity, Franklin Templeton entered the Canadian ETF market this past spring after its U.S. parent successfully launched an ETF fund family in June, 2016.

The Canadian division launched four actively managed funds under a new ETF brand – Franklin LibertyShares – that was first introduced in the United States last year. During the fund launches, the company said that while it has no plans to duplicate any of its mutual fund offerings, it will continue to leverage its active managers for both ETFs and mutual funds.

"We are going to utilize our talent globally and many of the mutual funds and ETFs can be managed and researched by the same individuals but the objectives will be slightly different," Patrick O'Connor, head of global ETFs for Franklin Templeton, said in an interview this spring with The Globe and Mail.

Mr. O'Connor, who is in charge for both the U.S and Canadian ETF divisions as well as a third operation that will launch in Europe later this year, said there wasn't much difference in launching between the two markets.

"An ETF ecosystem is an ETF ecosystem," Mr. O'Connor said. "There may be regulatory differences but the fundamentals of the markets, the portfolio managers and the products that work for Canadian investors – it is all very similar to what we did in the U.S."

Whether Fidelity will use its U.S. expertize and launch proprietary ETF products, or look to acquire an existing ETF provider in the Canadian market, will be closely watched among those in industry.

Partnerships and consolidation have already happened in the Canadian industry, and will continue to occur as larger ETF players – including the major mutual fund companies – aggressively compete to gain bigger slices of the pie. U.S. player WisdomTree recently scooped up Questrade's ETF business to double its Canadian assets and Bank of Nova Scotia's Dynamic Funds partnered with BlackRock Canada to wrap mutual funds into actively manged ETFs.

"The mutual fund companies AGF, Manulife and Dynamic [in partnership with iShares] all entered the market quite recently, but combined together their ETFs have attracted almost a $1-billion [in AUM] in a relatively short period of time," said Daniel Straus, ETF analyst with National Bank Financial in an interview in June.

"Mutual fund companies with strong distribution networks and client relationships might very well precipitate another leg up for ETF assets in Canada– and since their ETFs tend to be priced more aggressively than their mutual funds, it's investors who stand to benefit."

A look at Why active investors are jumping on the exchange-traded fund bandwagon

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