Dimensional Fund Advisors is directly getting into the exchange-traded fund business, though it already has been a behind-the-scenes player for five years.

The Austin, Texas-based investment firm today announced it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for three actively managed ETFs offering broadly diversified, all-cap core equity exposure to U.S., non-U.S. developed and emerging markets.

Since 1981, the company has devised rules-based, multifactor strategies influenced by the research of economists Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. Its strategies seek to isolate so-called dimensions, or factors—such as small capitalization, lower valuations and higher profitability—that it believes lead to market outperformance over the long haul.

Dimensional’s strategies have been offered via mutual funds, separate accounts and commingled trusts, and the company has developed a loyal following among many financial advisors. Its mutual funds have an aura of exclusivity about them, primarily because investors can buy them only through financial advisors. The firm has $454 billion in assets under management but, according to published reports, that figure was close to $580 billion toward the end of last year.

And since 2006, Dimensional has collaborated with John Hancock by managing some of that firm’s mutual funds, and that relationship expanded in 2015 when John Hancock launched the first of what are now 15 multifactor ETFs based on Dimensional indexes that emphasize the size, value and profitability factors.

But Dimensional is set to emerge from the background and will put its name on the marquee of the following products that will emphasize the same aforementioned three factors: the Dimensional US Core ETF, Dimensional International Core ETF and Dimensional Emerging Markets Core ETF.

The ticker symbols and expense ratios haven’t been announced.

For Dimensional, putting its investment strategies into the ETF format will expand its reach with investors and broaden its product relationship with advisors.

“We have a great feedback loop with advisors and our institutional clients, and we’ve had conversations with them over the past year around their interest in us offering our investment approach in an ETF wrapper,” said Dave Butler, Dimensional’s co-chief executive officer.

“There’s an evolution in wealth management,” he added. “The need to have active mutual funds, separate accounts and ETFs is a reality of the business today. We have been doing this for 40 years and we know how to add value from an investment perspective in a systematic way, and we want to be able to do that in various wrappers that give advisors flexibility to deliver on their client portfolios.”

Butler couldn’t talk about expected fees on Dimensional’s ETFs. But in looking for clues about potential costs based on similar, existing strategies within its mutual funds, the company’s two U.S. core equity portfolio mutual funds charge net expense ratios of 0.17% and 0.20%; its international core equity portfolio has a net expense ratio of 0.28% and its emerging markets core equity portfolio charges 0.48%. (The company cut fees across its mutual fund lineup earlier this year.)

Nor could Butler comment on potential portfolio overlap between existing mutual funds and ETFs that share the same investment strategy.

For the most part, all four mutual funds just mentioned have slightly underperformed their categories on an annualized basis during time periods ranging from one to 10 years, according to Morningstar. That’s because two of Dimensional's bedrock factors—size (i.e., small-cap) and value—have underperformed large-cap and growth stocks for an extended time period. Nonetheless, Morningstar analysts praise the company’s stewardship of investor capital.

Dimensional is bringing its active management style to ETFs at a time when many large traditional asset managers have lined up to launch—some have already launched—semi-transparent ETFs that disclose their holdings on a quarterly basis like mutual funds do. Dimensional’s ETFs will be fully transparent and their portfolios will let it all hang out on a daily basis, as has been customary with ETFs.

“We have a broadly diversified set of portfolios with a significant number of securities in our portfolios, so the idea of being transparent isn’t a problem from our perspective,” Butler said.

Semi-transparent ETF structures have arisen due to fears by asset managers that daily portfolio disclosures would let sophisticated investors front-run their trades and copy their proprietary strategies. Butler noted that Dimensional’s funds typically have low portfolio turnover, which minimizes those risks.

He expects Dimensional’s three ETFs to launch later this year, and indicated that additional ETFs could eventually be in the works.

“We’re in constant conversation with our clients around what they need in terms of delivering to their end client, and we’ll continue those conversations,” Butler said.