The purse strings of exchange-traded fund investors got a break today as State Street Global Advisors announced it has trimmed the management fees on 41 of its SPDR ETFs, effective immediately.

The haircuts on gross expense ratios range from 2 percent (from 50 basis points to 49 basis points) on the SPDR S&P BRIC 40 ETF (BIK) to nearly 66 percent (35 basis points to 12 basis points) on both the SPDR S&P 1500 Momentum Tilt ETF (MMTM) and SPDR S&P 1500 Value Tilt ETF (VLU) funds.

“We actually started this process last summer, so this was part of a comprehensive review of our entire fund lineup,” says Nick Good, chief operating officer at State Street Global Advisors' intermediary business. “As we looked across our entire fund range, these were the funds we felt we could take action on, and we tried to go across as broad a range of funds as we could.”

As a result of the markdowns, four fixed-income ETFs now sport gross expense ratios of 10 basis points, making them among the lowest-cost funds in the entire roster of 145 SPDR funds.

Previously, the company’s flagship SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) had cracked the single-digit expense ratio barrier with a net expense ratio of nine basis points.

But that still leaves room for improvement because ETF rivals iShares, Vanguard and Charles Schwab all boast multiple funds with single-digit expense ratios.

Good notes that State Street remains cost-competitive within the industry. “Being competitive on pricing has always been a core part of our value proposition,” he says. “Our median expense ratio of 35 basis points is a lot lower than the industry average that’s closer to 49 basis points.

"We’ve always been focused on delivering value for clients, and that goes beyond just headline management fees,” he adds. “It’s also trading costs, and we have strong capital markets support.”

Good says State Street has heavily invested in its ETF operations in recent years in areas such as investment strategies, practice management and portfolio analytics, along with launching innovative products such as its factor-based “Quality Mix” international funds and its partnerships with the likes of Blackstone and a forthcoming fund with DoubleLine.

“This [the newly announced fee reductions] is part of a much broader initiative to strengthen our ETF business,” Good says.