At the beginning of 2025, Investo, a Brazilian asset manager specializing in ETFs, had just under R$2 billion under management. A year and a half later, its assets had multiplied fivefold, reaching over R$10 billion. And the goal is to surpass R$12 billion this year.

Behind this leap by Investo, which is controlled by the American company VanEck, lies a transformation of the Brazilian ETF market, which is beginning to gain traction in the face of the difficulty active managers are having in beating benchmark indices.

“Investors are looking for options that generate better returns and are more transparent. This is greatly helping ETFs as a vehicle,” says Cauê Mançanares, founder and CEO of Investo, on Café com Investidor , a program that is a partnership between NeoFeed and CNN Brasil , broadcast bi-weekly on CNN Money .

The growth of ETFs is a reality in Brazil, although they still represent a very small slice of the investment industry. The total volume invested has recently doubled, going from R$ 50 billion to almost R$ 100 billion.

Although it still represents only 1% of the local investment industry, Mançanares observes that, despite the product existing in the country for more than two decades, its use is still incipient. "Everything new takes time for people to get used to," says Mançanares.

According to Mançanares, ETFs have gained traction due to a combination of factors. One of them is performance. "More than 90% of active managers don't outperform benchmark indices," says the founder and CEO of Investo.

Other points mentioned include liquidity, since the fund is traded on the stock exchange and can be bought and sold on the same day; transparency; and cost, which is reduced, with no performance fee and management fees much lower than the average for active funds.

The asset manager expanded its product portfolio, but not at the same pace as its assets under management. Today, it holds approximately 30 ETFs, compared to 20 at the beginning of 2025. The diversification includes fixed income, Brazilian and global equities, gold, and Bitcoin.

Favorable taxation has boosted fixed-income ETFs. "Fixed-income ETFs don't have withholding tax, and you pay a single tax rate that doesn't depend on your investment term," says Mançanares.

In this program, which you can watch in the video above, Mançanares also talks about the trend of actively managed ETFs and comments on bonus payments in ETFs. Finally, he answers questions about how he uses AI and whether he trusts the responses from LLM platforms.