What has more than EUR 13 trillion in assets under management in the EU, distribution in all 27 Member States and more than 50 countries across the globe, as well as strong safeguards to protect investors? Meet one of the EU’s biggest success stories in financial services: UCITS.
For 40 years now, the EU’s framework for mainstream collective investment schemes – undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS) – has been offering institutional and retail investors a safe and attractive way to put their money to work. At the same time, UCITS funds channel financing to the economy, boosting job creation, innovation, and other big EU political priorities: European asset managers alone hold a combined total of almost EUR 10 trillion in EU‑issued bonds and listed shares, supporting our businesses and citizens and enabling the EU economy to compete on the world stage.
A lot has changed since the original UCITS Directive was adopted at the end of 1985, and UCITS funds have been able to adapt to innovation in financial markets. We have seen the rise of passive and exchange‑traded funds, as well as the emergence of innovative investment strategies, new players entering the market and entire new asset classes appearing, such as carbon allowances, catastrophe bonds or crypto assets. Investor preferences have also evolved, driven for example by technological changes that enable a more direct and active choice of investment products. And asset managers have started to experiment with tokenisation, i.e. the issuance or representation of assets in the form of digital programmable wrappers, mostly on distributed‑ledger technology (DLT), which is set to bring further changes.
Throughout, UCITS funds have remained by far the most popular type of collective investment vehicle for retail investors in Europe. But they have also established themselves as an attractive product for institutional investors. In fact, only roughly 30% of UCITS are held by retail investors directly, with the rest of the investment coming from institutional investors such as insurers or pension funds (sometimes on behalf of retail clients), corporates and others.
To keep abreast of market developments, the EU has regularly updated and improved the legal framework for UCITS over the past decades. The European Commission is seeking to do so again as part of the market integration and supervision package it tabled in December 2025.
In addition to this, we will continue to analyse the impact of recent changes on the market. This will be crucial to ensure that the framework remains fit for the future, enabling responsible innovation while keeping UCITS competitive, for example when it comes to fund tokenisation or by providing clarity and consistency on which kinds of assets UCITS can invest in. We also need to anticipate and mitigate potential new risks arising from the evolution of investor behaviour and product offerings. This will be the focus of technical and analytical work that Commission Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) will be carrying out throughout 2026 – while we celebrate a very successful first 40 years of UCITS!
Related links
More about UCITS
Back to the Finance news hub