A new exchange traded fund from the wealth and asset management arm of Deutsche Bank is said to break fresh ground.

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management says it has launched the first exchange-traded fund that gives access to all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council group of nations, including Saudi Arabia.

The db x-trackers MSCI GCC Select Index UCITS ETF tracks the equity markets of GCC nations with a 65 per cent weighting to Saudi Arabia. The ETF is listed on the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse.

While there are other ETFs tracking GCC states, until the latest product came along, none has included Saudi Arabia in the group of markets, a spokesperson told this publication. (The other GCC states are Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.)

The German firm said the GCC continues to be a key focus for investors – in part as it is less likely to be affected by the recent slump in oil prices than many of the world’s oil-exporting nations due to its strong reserves, at least according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest Regional Economic Outlook. Recent figures from the European Commission cite the GCC as the European Union’s fifth largest export market - accounting for €95 billion ($107 billion) of exports in 2013 - while the EU is the grouping's biggest trading partner, with trade flows totaling €152 billion, or 13 per cent of the GCC's global trade.

“The Saudi Arabian stock market has traditionally been difficult for foreign investors to access, so the launch of an index tracker providing exchange-traded exposure to all the GCC countries is a significant step forward,” said Deutsche AWM’s head of exchange-traded products, EMEA, Manooj Mistry.

The ETF tracks the MSCI GCC Countries ex Select Securities Index, which is based on the MSCI GCC Countries Index but with the exclusion of a small number of stocks due to restrictions on foreign ownership. The underlying index is market capitalisation-weighted and currently consists of 82 securities. Deutsche AWM will charge an annual one-off fee of 0.65 per cent for access to the ETF.

Deutsche AWM currently offers over 60 emerging and frontier market ETFs, designed to provide investors with a high level of granularity and allowing for the targeting of specific countries, regions and sectors. The new ETF’s currency is in dollars.