Ms. Aguirre's comments came during an event at BlackRock's New York headquarters Wednesday.Panelists at the event also included Jay Jacobs, the former head of research at Global X Management Co. who joined BlackRock last week as U.S. head of thematics and active equity ETFs, and Armando Senra, managing director and head of iShares Americas.
"We have a long track record in thematic investing at BlackRock," Mr. Senra said. "In fact, we're the largest thematic investing fund manager in the world."
While thematic investing has seen "tremendous" growth, "at the same time, I think that we're just scratching the surface, we're at the very early days," he said, adding that thematic ETFs still only account for only 3% of the total U.S. ETF industry.
Mr. Senra cited a paper released Wednesday by BlackRock regarding permanent changes the manager believes will translate to exponential growth opportunities.
"Today, we probably see more rapid change in the world than at any other time in our history," said Mr. Senra, who cited three themes contained in the paper that BlackRock believes investors should be paying attention to: "industrial renaissance," how health care has been forever transformed and the "new consumer."
According to the paper, global inflation and supply chain disruption "could make industrial investments in automation, infrastructure, and the future of transportation immediately critical." The paper also discusses how pioneering mRNA vaccines used in the fight against COVID-19 could be applied to diseases ranging from influenza to HIV. The paper also addresses how millennials and developing market consumers are emerging from lockdowns as the key spenders driving the global economy.
BlackRock offers the world's largest active and index thematic platform, spanning 43 products with more than $50 billion in assets under management as of Wednesday, according to the news release.
BlackRock had $9.6 trillion in assets under management as of March 31.
