Franklin Templeton Investments on Thursday introduced four new passive exchange-traded funds that are market cap-weighted and benchmarked to country and regional indexes from FTSE Russell.
The Franklin FTSE India ETF (FLIN), Franklin FTSE Russia ETF (FLRU), Franklin FTSE Asia ex Japan ETF (FLAX) and Franklin FTSE Switzerland ETF (FLSW) join a suite of 16 low-cost international-focused funds that launched in November.
The ETFs in that initial rollout had expense ratios ranging from 0.09 percent to 0.19 percent. Expense ratios for the new funds follow that template, with the Switzerland fund at 0.09 percent and the other three products at 0.19 percent.
These lower-cost funds are aimed at taking market share from the iShares franchise of country-focused funds, which carry expense ratios between 0.30 percent and 0.93 percent.
The Franklin LibertyShares ETF platform now consists of 33 products covering actively managed equity and fixed-income funds, a smart beta suite across both U.S. and international equity markets, and its passive suite of country and region-specific ETFs.