Yeah, I think our perspective, is a little broad because we
are offering products across multiple sleeves
-- UITs, mutual funds, ETFs.
And like I mentioned, we've been at it since 2012.
So, from our vantage point, we don't
think the innovation has really just happened now.
I think like anything sort of the numbers
have added up over time.
And now they're big enough, in billions
of dollars, to be noticeable.
There is a sort of a product innovation.
And then I guess we could pivot to talk
about from a client's perspective.
From a product innovation perspective,
the biggest breakthrough was demonstrating that FLEX options
can be packaged into 1940 Act
funds to deliver these payoffs.
And we went down that path.
It took us a few years with the SEC,
and putting the exchange infrastructure in place.
So,
how Trevor says they didn't invent the defined outcome space.
We did, specifically, by creating this creating this innovation.
And now we look back to see if there
are any aspects about the space that triggered
the innovation at that time.
And really, I think we are hard-pressed to find something.
I think we just happened to be the first ones to do it --
and no one really tried before that -- because
FLEX options existed since the 1950s --
and using derivatives in '40 Act funds was not really novel.
However, from a client's perspective,
the timing is interesting.
And I agree with a lot of the things that Trevor said.
There's been sort of a plateauing of sorts, or sort
of saturation in what you call the traditional structured
note market.
And I think there's been some uplift over the years with CDs
and annuities. But the jailbreak of sorts that these '40 Act products
offer is the transparency that Trevor talked
about -- the liquidity, the competitive price
discovery, the lack of credit risk and the tax efficiency
to name a few.
And so I agree on that part of it --
with Trevor. These are really very investor-friendly features.
And a lot of these features are
available across all those wrappers -- mutual funds, ETFs and UITs.
Yes, specifically when packaged into an ETF, that is also
very timely -- because now that wrapper is
sort of a successful wrapper in its own right.
I think the market conditions have helped
somewhat the adoption of specific kind of strategies.
Again, our product suite is very broad,
but if you look at the protective buffer-oriented
strategies, they have benefited a lot from the increase in risk
and volatility and low yields.
So, they look attractive on a relative basis,
and that probably augurs why there's been uptick recently.