Periods of volatility can shake investor confidence, and advisors often find themselves playing the role of both guide and stabilizer. MFS Investment Management, with more than a century of history, aims to give advisors the tools to support clients through uncertain markets while simplifying complex choices.
That commitment took a major step forward in December 2024, as MFS debuted its first suite of actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The launch marks a natural extension of the firm’s long-standing investment capabilities into one of the fastest-growing corners of the U.S. asset management market.
The five new funds span U.S. equities, international equities, and fixed income. Each strategy is fully transparent, disclosing holdings daily, and managed by the same seasoned professionals who oversee MFS’s mutual funds and separately managed accounts (SMAs).
For advisors, the ETFs are designed to feel familiar. They reflect long-standing strategies already in use across MFS vehicles, but packaged in a structure that seeks to offer daily liquidity and tax efficiency. “Now, you’re accessing that strategy that you know and love but in a different vehicle,” Justin Hansen, Managing Director of Global Strategic Accounts and Retail SMA at MFS, tells The Wealth Advisor. That continuity is central to MFS’s broader mission: giving advisors tools that balance risk, foster long-term discipline, and evolve alongside client needs.
Expanding Access: New ETFs from Proven Strategies
MFS has broadened its toolkit for advisors by introducing five actively managed ETFs built directly on long-established strategies, entering an active ETF market that now represents nearly $700 billion in U.S. assets.
“What we did is, we took proven capabilities that we already have, and we kept it simple,” Hansen says.
Each ticker directly reflects its strategy—MFSV for value, MFSG for growth, MFSI for international, MFSM for municipals, and MFSB for bonds. The design is intentional, Hansen explains, allowing advisors to easily recognize the proven strategies they already know, in a new structure. “There’s some nuances, there’s some differences, but at the end of the day, it’s a lot of the same style philosophy and management,” he notes.
The expansion means advisors may align client preferences with familiar strategies without needing to learn a new investment philosophy. Whether a client prefers an ETF for liquidity or a mutual fund for long-term allocation, the strategy remains consistent.
MFS® Active Value ETF (ticker: MFSV)
Objective: Capital appreciation
Approach: Focuses on large-cap, high-quality companies with attractive valuations using flexible, cash-flow-driven methodologies
Top Holdings as of July 31: JPMorgan Chase, Progressive, McKesson, Cigna Group, Duke Energy
Advisor Angle: Value allocation that emphasizes risk management across all market environments
MFS® Active Growth ETF (ticker: MFSG)
Objective: Capital appreciation
Approach: Targets companies with above-average, durable growth prospects where duration of growth is underappreciated by the market
Top Holdings as of July 31: NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple
Advisor Angle: Exposure to secular growth leaders while maintaining risk discipline through MFS’s integrated research platform
MFS® Active International ETF (ticker: MFSI)
Objective: Capital appreciation
Approach: Well-diversified, high-conviction international equity portfolio with “growth at a reasonable price” style and quality bias
Top Holdings as of July 31: Taiwan Semiconductor, Tencent, SAP, Air Liquide, Rolls-Royce
Advisor Angle: Non-U.S. diversification with quality bias and MFS research-driven downside risk-mitigation principles
MFS® Active Core Plus Bond ETF (ticker: MFSB)
Objective: Total return with emphasis on current income and capital appreciation
Approach: Primarily investment-grade bonds with active sector, quality, and duration positioning; integrates macro, fundamental, and technical perspectives
Top Holdings as of July 31: U.S. Treasuries across maturities, mortgage-backed securities
Advisor Angle: U.S. core plus bond strategy with collaborative risk budgeting and fundamentally driven security selection
MFS® Active Intermediate Muni Bond ETF (ticker: MFSM)
Objective: Total return with emphasis on federally tax-exempt income and capital appreciation
Approach: Active management of municipal credit markets, exploiting inefficiencies through rigorous credit research and sector/quality allocation
Top Holdings as of July 31: Arapahoe County School District No. 5, CO; California Community Choice Financing Authority, CA; Greater Asheville Regional Airport Authority, NC; Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority, PA; New York City Housing Development Corp., NY
Advisor Angle: For tax-sensitive clients, builds on MFS’s municipal bond expertise since the 1970s with attorneys embedded in the investment team
All five ETFs benefit from dedicated MFS ETF capital markets team support, market-leading trading and liquidity from the New York Stock Exchange, and their simplicity. Product proliferation can easily overwhelm clients and even advisors, especially when the same strategy is available in multiple forms. Hansen believes clarity is essential. “I don’t think you’re selling funds anymore; you’re selling strategies,” he says. “And those strategies have a mutual fund and a separately managed account and ETF and a CIT for the retirement business.”
The goal is consistency: regardless of wrapper, the underlying philosophy and approach remain intact, recognizable, and readily understood.
Volatility, Psychology, and the Long View
Advisors know that market turbulence is inevitable, but the reaction from clients can be more unpredictable. Hansen points out that after years of strong returns, there’s now a generation of investors that has never truly experienced a downturn. “So, I think what we have to do is not worry so much about the markets, but worry about the psychology of the people looking at the markets and help them lengthen the time horizon,” he explains.
Helping clients move beyond the “issue of the day” requires focusing on resilience rather than daily fluctuations. MFS has endured through wars, recessions, and financial crises over its 100-year history, giving the firm perspective that advisors can leverage.
“We’ve weathered those storms, and I think the key is helping people navigate when the markets go wild,” Hansen says. “And that’s what we’re out doing today.”
Beyond Passive Indexing: Blending Active and Passive
In modern portfolio construction, one of the biggest challenges is striking the right balance between efficiency and oversight. Passive vehicles offer cost-effective market exposure, but they don’t address concentration risk or identify opportunities in shifting environments. Active management, by contrast, can bring judgment and stewardship to the process.
“People still matter, and humans looking at things that are good stewards of capital, companies that have intellectual property, managing that concentration risk in a portfolio I think is super important always,” Hansen says.
That doesn’t mean dismissing ETFs or passive exposures. Rather, Hansen argues for balance. “It doesn’t mean you don’t use an ETF, or a passive ETF—I think it’s marrying it with active management,” he adds. “It’s not active or passive. It’s active and—you could buy cheap beta, but you also have to make sure you’re managing that risk.”
Supporting Advisor Growth, Not Just Selling Funds
The industry is also evolving in terms of what advisors expect from asset managers. Instead of competing on the merits of one product over another, Hansen says MFS is focused on working with advisors to expand their practices. “It’s about helping advisors create capacity for growth,” he explains. “If we help advisors grow, they will find a slot in their unified managed account for MFS because we have a lot of products.”
The comprehensive support includes education on topics such as Social Security planning or running multigenerational family meetings—areas that go beyond investment performance but directly influence client loyalty. By positioning itself as a growth partner, MFS seeks to ensure its strategies become part of an advisor’s broader offering.
Models, Technology, Capacity for Growth and Collaboration
Advisors face expanding responsibilities—from estate planning to education savings—while needing to maintain personalized service. As wealth management evolves, Hansen sees models and technology as opportunities to both simplify advisor practices and improve outcomes. He notes that, historically, wealth management began with individual securities and expanded into funds. Now, the industry is shifting toward portfolio construction and model delivery.
“There’s a real opportunity to use technology. Let us at MFS be the intellectual capital provider, but have a holistic tax overlay on that,” Hansen observes. Rather than waiting until year-end for tax harvesting, for example, technology can identify opportunities in real time. Combining MFS’s strategies with technology-driven overlays, he argues, “makes a lot more sense than these individual dual contracts.”
Models can free capacity by automating investment management without sacrificing sophistication, but technology alone isn’t enough—it requires the right organizational culture to maximize its potential. The firm believes lasting outcomes depend on breaking down silos rather than reinforcing them. In fixed income, for example, attorneys work directly alongside portfolio managers in the municipal bond group, embedding legal expertise into investment decisions rather than treating it as an external resource.
“We don’t just have a legal department—we have lawyers sitting on the municipal team that are looking right at these things,” Hansen explains. “It’s not, ‘I’m going to call the other floor.’ They’re sitting with them.”
Building Trust That Endures Market Cycles
As advisors navigate an increasingly complex landscape—managing client psychology through volatility, balancing active and passive strategies, and expanding their service offerings—they need partners who understand that success isn’t measured in quarterly performance alone. It’s measured in relationships that withstand market cycles, strategies that adapt without abandoning core principles, and the quiet confidence that comes from enduring decades of market cycles.
The launch of MFS’s active ETF suite represents more than product expansion—it’s a testament to the power of staying true to core principles while adapting to market evolution. MFS has stood through a century of upheavals, from the Great Depression to the 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis to today’s uncertain environment—demonstrating that the firm’s longevity isn’t built on chasing trends or conjuring new products, but on consistently delivering proven strategies through whatever vehicle best serves clients’ needs.
“That’s where we can help,” Hansen says. “Not making this world more complicated, but quite frankly the opposite: How do we simplify the complicated for the client?”
In a world of endless product proliferation and market noise, sometimes the most powerful innovation is making the complex feel simple again.
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