In a low interest rate environment, conservative capital is steadily searching for new outlets along a well-defined path. Wind data shows that on September 23, bond ETF assets climbed above the trillion-yuan mark for the first time. By the end of the third quarter, that figure had reached 1,039.7 billion yuan. Looking back at the third quarter, bond ETFs displayed powerful fundraising momentum, drawing combined net inflows of more than 140 billion yuan, among which E Fund Corporate Bond ETF (511110) attracted quarterly net inflows of 11 billion yuan and E Fund Sci-Tech Innovation Bond ETF (551500) drew quarterly net inflows of 9.2 billion yuan, both ranking among the top bond ETFs across the entire market.

In recent years, the wave of index-based bond investing has gained momentum, with bond ETF assets rising from 18.6 billion yuan at the end of 2020 to 896.6 billion yuan by the end of the second quarter of this year, an increase of nearly 50 times, before further breaking through the trillion-yuan threshold by the end of the third quarter. Li Yishuo, general manager of the Bond Index Investment Department at E Fund, said bond ETF products can transform underlying bond assets that trade discretely off-exchange into investment and trading tools that can be traded continuously on-exchange, so bond ETFs have significantly improved liquidity compared with their underlying assets, allowing institutional capital to move in and out with ease, which has made them an increasingly important allocation and trading tool.

Breaking down fund flows within bond ETFs further, it becomes clear that sci-tech innovation bond ETFs and corporate bond ETFs, the two main categories of credit bond ETFs, provided the most important support for this round of trillion-yuan expansion, contributing nearly 70% of the net inflows into bond ETFs during the third quarter. Sci-tech innovation bond ETFs have now become one of the largest categories within bond ETFs. By the end of the third quarter, the combined scale of 24 sci-tech innovation bond ETFs across the whole market stood at nearly 370 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 40% of total bond ETF assets, with 18 of them exceeding 10 billion yuan in scale.

According to Li Yishuo, sci-tech innovation bond ETFs offer investors a convenient tool for allocating a basket of high-grade sci-tech corporate bonds, with underlying assets combining the advantages of relatively high credit ratings and enhanced coupon income. In the third quarter of this year, the 24 sci-tech innovation bond ETFs together attracted nearly 43 billion yuan in net inflows, becoming an important source of incremental growth in this round of bond ETF expansion, among which E Fund Sci-Tech Innovation Bond ETF (551500) saw net inflows of more than 9 billion yuan. Galaxy Securities data shows that as of September 30, 2026, E Fund Sci-Tech Innovation Bond ETF (551500) delivered a cumulative return of 3.01% over the past year, with a maximum drawdown of 0.31%, placing its return level and drawdown control among the top of the first batch of sci-tech innovation bond ETFs tracking the same index.

Turning to corporate bond ETFs, Wind data shows that in the third quarter of this year, more than 46 billion yuan in net inflows went into benchmark market-making corporate bond ETFs, among which E Fund Corporate Bond ETF (511110) recorded net inflows of 11 billion yuan. It is understood that E Fund Sci-Tech Innovation Bond ETF (551500) and E Fund Corporate Bond ETF (511110) were both among the first batch of such products on the market. Including these two ETFs, E Fund currently has 11 bond index products covering multiple varieties and the full range of maturities, all implementing low fee rates of 0.15% per year for management fees and 0.05% per year for custody fees, providing investors with low-cost bond index investment tools.

In the era of low interest rates, the central level of bond yields has shifted downward, and fixed-income investing is moving from capturing big opportunities to carefully mining small returns. Against this backdrop, bond ETFs such as sci-tech innovation bond ETFs and corporate bond ETFs, with tool attributes including transparent holdings, low costs and high liquidity, are becoming an increasingly important channel for more and more capital to allocate to bond assets. E Fund Bond Index Fund Product Line Category Fund Abbreviation Main Share Class Inception Date Fund Code Short Duration E Fund ChinaBond 1-3 Year China Development Bank Bond Index Fund 2019/04/29 Class A: 007169 Class C: 007170 E Fund ChinaBond 0-3 Year Policy Bank Bond Index Fund 2024/03/20 Class A: 020295 Class C: 020296 E Fund ChinaBond 1-3 Year Policy Bank Bond Index Fund 2019/12/03 Class A: 007364 Class C: 007365 Medium Duration E Fund ChinaBond 3-5 Year China Development Bank Bond Index Fund 2019/07/08 Class A: 007171 Class C: 007172 E Fund ChinaBond 1-5 Year Policy Bank Bond Index Fund 2024/06/05 Class A: 021325 Class C: 021326 E Fund ChinaBond 3-5 Year Treasury Bond Index Fund 2015/07/08 001512 Long Duration E Fund ChinaBond 7-10 Year China Development Bank Bond Index Fund 2016/09/27 Class A: 003358 Class C: 009803 Class D: 022359 Credit Bonds E Fund Preferred Investment Grade Credit Bond Index Fund 2023/10/25 Class A: 018996 Class C: 018743 E Fund SSE Benchmark Market-Making Corporate Bond ETF 2025/01/16 511110 E Fund CSI AAA Sci-Tech Innovation Corporate Bond ETF 2025/07/10 551500 Composite Bonds E Fund ChinaBond New Composite Index Fund 2012/11/08 Class A: 161119 Class C: 161120 Class D: 021606