Pictet AM launches in Europe its first range of AI-enhanced active management ETFs
1 JUL, 2026
By Joanna Piwko from RankiaPro Europe
Pictet AM has launched its first European range of UCITS equity indexed ETFs with enhanced active management through artificial intelligence. The new offering includes four ETFs and builds on the firm's previous experience in AI-driven quantitative strategies, with the aim of offering an alternative to traditional passive management with limited additional cost.
The catalogue launched by the manager consists of the Pictet AI Enhanced World Equity UCITS ETF (PQWD), Pictet AI Enhanced World ex US Equity UCITS ETF (PQWX), Pictet AI Enhanced US Equity UCITS ETF (PQUS) and Pictet AI Enhanced European Equity UCITS ETF (PQEU). The team of David Wright, director of quantitative investments at the manager, will manage the new range of ETFs.
As the entity explains, these vehicles are designed to closely replicate the evolution of their respective benchmark indices, but with the aspiration of outperforming them by around 1% per year net of fees. To this end, the strategy is set with a maximum tracking error of 2% and a beta of 1.0, which implies that the behaviour of each fund should remain almost aligned with its market.
The manager points out that the model combines its own artificial intelligence engine, responsible for stock selection, with an automated portfolio optimization process. All of this is supervised by Pictet's quantitative investment team, which is responsible for both the development of the model and its quarterly training and continuous monitoring of the portfolios.
The backing of the Quest AI-Driven Global Equities fund
The launch takes as a reference the track record of Pictet - Quest AI-Driven Global Equities, a UCITS fund domiciled in Luxembourg and launched in March 2024. This strategy, also based on a transparent and factor-neutral AI model, already exceeds $3 billion under management.
Until the end of May 2026, the fund had accumulated a net revaluation of 50% in dollars, compared to the 45.9% recorded by its benchmark index, the MSCI World, in the same period. In addition to its fund format, the strategy is also available to institutional investors through segregated mandates.
Pictet emphasizes that their approach seeks to generate a source of alpha different from traditional factor-based approaches, by maintaining a factor-neutral construction and, therefore, less dependent on economic and market cycles. The firm believes that this can be attractive to investors looking for a return higher than that of passive management without assuming a significant increase in risk and at a moderate cost.
In fact, some of the firm's clients are already using these enhanced indexed strategies to reduce costs in their portfolios, replacing, for example, 20% of their passive allocations. According to the entity, this adjustment can almost zero the cost of the indexed component within a portfolio. The new ETFs are already listed on Xetra, in Germany, and on Euronext Italy, and it is planned that they will also soon be incorporated into the London Stock Exchange and SIX, in Switzerland.
Many investors think that improving results involves resorting to new or exotic sources of excess return or alpha. In reality, it often involves taking advantage of the investment universe and data in a smarter way. This is where the advantage of AI lies, which allows identifying complex patterns, undetectable to humans. This is the case of the new family of AI-enhanced active management ETFs, which offers our clients new options for basic asset allocation. The goal is to achieve excess return relative to each benchmark index at a low cost without substantially increasing risk.
David Wright, director of quantitative investments at Pictet AM
