Still a small segment of the overall exchange traded funds/product market, those vehicles with an "active" approach surged in terms of assets last year.

Assets invested in active exchange traded funds and products listed globally increased by 57.3 per cent last year, hitting a record of $75.2 billion, although still a fraction of the overall ETF/ETP market ($4.835 trillion).

That increase was the fastest growth in in assets since 2009, ETFGI, an organisation following the sector, said in a report.

This record was achieved on the eve of another milestone for the ETF industry: the 25th anniversary of the listing of the first ETF in the US, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY US), on 22 January 1993. At the end of 2017, SPY on its own accounted for assets of $271.39 billion.

An actively managed exchange traded fund or product has a manager or team making decisions on the underlying portfolio allocation or otherwise not following a passive investment strategy.

ETFs are typically open-ended, index-based funds, with active ETFs and can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange and offer broad exposure across developed, emerging and frontier markets, equities, fixed income and commodities. Exchange traded products are products that have similarities to ETFs in the way they trade and settle but do not use an open-end fund structure. The use of other structures including unsecured debt, grantor trusts, partnerships, and commodity pools by ETPs can, in addition to a significantly different risk profile, create different tax and regulatory implications for investors when compared to ETFs, which are funds.