ACA Foreside | Best ETF Distributor
Christopher Lanza, Partner and Co-Head of ACA Foreside, explains what lies behind ACA Group’s success in the 2025 US awards.
What is the size and scale of your business at the moment?
ACA Group (ACA) is a leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisory and technology firm serving the financial services industry. ACA’s distribution business, ACA Foreside, is the industry’s largest third-party distributor by client AUM, number of funds, FINRA filings, and servicer of registered representative licenses. ACA Foreside’s affiliated broker-dealers distribute and service more than USD2 trillion of client assets across hundreds of fund families.
ACA, headquartered in New York, has offices across the US, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and India. The firm serves more than 6,000 clients in over 55 countries and is supported by more than 1,400 governance, risk and compliance professionals.
The ACA team brings decades of experience and subject matter expertise to our clients from our global team, which includes former regulators and industry experts.
What trends have you seen over the past year?
The ETF industry continues to see record-breaking growth and again ACA Foreside has assisted in launching 50 per cent of all ETFs in the industry. This growth has been broadly based in part by the expansion of active management strategies and more specialised innovative products such as options-based strategies, digital funds, single stock funds, and more rotation from mutual funds to ETFs.
At the same time, we have seen regulatory compliance, risk management, and effective use of regulatory technology be key focal points for ETF issuers to navigate and compete within.
What plans do you have for growing your business over the coming year?
As a premier service partner, our business is driven by our clients, industry product innovation, and regulatory changes. We are motivated every day by all of these forces.
ACA will continue our strong industry participation through many different channels and regions with adviser compliance consulting, regulatory technology, and distribution services.
Where do you see the ETF industry going in terms of products over the coming year?
We expect continued rapid growth in the ETF industry in 2026, with differentiation driving increased interest in actively managed strategies, thematic products, cryptocurrency, and options-based ETFs.
Industry ETF launches are targeted to exceed 1,000 this year. In 2026, all signs point to another bullish year, including consideration of the ETF share class structure that is expected to receive broad SEC approval and may contribute to new product proliferation.
How will your firm be able to support them?
Client service excellence is ACA’s north star supported by our exceptional team of subject matter experts with a high-quality service mindset. As the leading ETF distributor, ACA Foreside’s size and active participation on regulatory committees and industry boards positions us to remain at the forefront of new product innovation. This enables us to provide best practice servicing to our clients.
Our clients and the rapidly growing industry continue to motivate us every day to be innovative, nimble, and consultative with our servicing.
Why do you think you won this award?
We believe our clients recognised our experience, subject matter expertise, and solution-oriented approach to servicing. We also think they appreciate our ability to deliver a holistic approach across all our compliance solutions.
We are extremely honoured to win this award again this year and remain committed to helping our clients succeed.
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