State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) has unveiled the SPDR MSCI World Small Cap UCITS ETF (ZPRS), the first ever exchange-traded fund to track the MSCI World Small Cap Index.

SSgA SPDR’s latest ETF offers exposure to small-cap companies across 24 developed market countries globally.

Listed on the Deutsche Börse, the new UCITS-compliant ETF offers exposure to the small-cap segment of all developed markets in a single investment and can be used to tilt a portfolio towards growth.

The underlying index captures small-cap representation across 24 developed markets countries, covering approximately 14% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country.

The index is extremely well diversified with more than 4,000 constituents. The US has the largest country weight with 58.2%, followed by Japan (10.1%), the UK (8.4%), Canada (4.4%) and Australia (2.6%). The remaining 19 countries in the index comprise about 16.3%.

In terms of sector weights, financial companies have the largest representation with 21.8% followed by industrials (18.1%), consumer discretionary (16.2%), information technology (13.0%) and health care (9.0%). The remaining sectors contribute just shy of 22%.

The fund complements SSgA’s existing range of European domiciled and listed small cap ETFs which includes the SPDR MSCI Europe Small Cap UCITS ETF and SPDR MSCI Emerging Market Small Cap UCITS ETF.

Eleanor Hope-Bell, head of SPDR UK at SSgA commented: “Small caps are an attractive segment of the market offering the potential for high returns and greater diversification within a portfolio. Small caps also tend to outperform large cap stocks over time. MSCI World Small Cap, for example, has outperformed MSCI World in the last three, five and ten years. This investment tool will help investors capture the ‘small cap premium’ identified in academic research globally”.

The fund is physically replicated and has a total expense ratio of 0.45%.

SSgA’s European ETF business has achieved $3.4 billion in net inflows year-to-date and has 53 SPDR ETFs available across Europe. Globally, SSgA manages more than $330 billion in SPDR-branded ETF assets worldwide and is one of the largest ETF providers globally.