Northern Trust Asset Management has filed regulatory paperwork to turn six mutual funds into exchange-traded funds, a move the firm says would amount to the largest such conversion in industry history. The funds, which collectively oversee about $33 billion, are slated to become ETFs in the first quarter of 2027, according to a filing Friday. The conversions would roughly double the size of Northern Trust’s ETF platform to about $60 billion and mark the global asset manager’s first foray into transforming existing mutual funds into ETFs.

The conversion comes as competition intensifies across the roughly $16 trillion US ETF industry with investors and asset managers increasingly gravitating toward the wrapper. The trend has accelerated even after regulators last year cleared companies to add ETF share classes to existing mutual funds. In 2026, active mutual funds saw a net $690.4 billion outflow, with passive ones losing $321.8 billion — all the while their exchange-traded counterparts took in more than $1.4 trillion.

The move by Northern Trust echoes a 2021 decision by Dimensional Fund Advisors, which converted four equity mutual funds with $28.8 billion in assets into ETFs. JPMorgan Asset Management in 2025 announced plans to convert mutual funds to ETFs as well. “The later a firm comes into the ETF world, the more it makes sense to do a conversions,” said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.