BlackRock Bond Chief's First ETF Is All About Income

Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer of global fixed income at the world’s largest exchange-traded fund issuer, is setting sail on his first strategy under the vehicle.

The actively managed BlackRock Flexible Income ETF (ticker BINC) will aim to outperform and provide investors long-term income by investing in “harder to reach fixed-income sectors,” such as high-yield bonds, emerging markets debt and securitized assets, according to a Tuesday press release.

While BlackRock Inc. is the largest ETF manager with nearly $3 trillion spread across more than 1,000 funds worldwide, BINC is the first ETF that Rieder is personally managing.

Fixed-income ETFs have boomed in popularity in recent years, a category dominated by BlackRock — the asset manager controls roughly $600 billion of the nearly $1.4 trillion held in U.S. debt ETFs.

The advent of the ETF market has been “extraordinary” and has made it much easier to trade less-liquid fixed-income instruments such as high-yield bonds, Rieder said at a Tuesday press event.