European ETF assets have reached a milestone of £327bn after 15 years in existence with Blackrock predicting they will have assets of over £650bn (US$1 trillion) in less than five years from now.

The first European ETFs were launched in 2000 against a backdrop of the millennium celebrations and fears of the Y2K bug. The first ETFs to list in Europe were two European equity ETFs on Deutsche Börse on 11 April 2000: the iShares STOXX Europe 50 UCITS ETF and iShares EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF. This was quickly followed by the first ETF to list on the UK's London Stock Exchange on 28 April 2000, the iShares Core FTSE 100 UCITS ETF.

BlackRock, which owns iShares, says that there are now 2,269 different exchange traded products in Europe, listed in 22 countries across the continent by 45 different providers. The industry holds £327bn in assets and the original UK ETF, iShares Core FTSE 100 UCITS ETF, has grown to become the largest UK equities ETF with £3.7bn in assets under management.

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BlackRock's Rachel Lord, head of EMEA iShares, said: "ETFs are one of the success stories of twenty-first century investing in Europe. In just 15 years, this financial market has grown from scratch into an industry on the cusp of US$500 billion, by providing levels of efficiency, transparency and value-for-money that have democratised investing for those across the continent.

"ETFs domiciled in Europe continue to grow rapidly, despite recent economic and geopolitical uncertainties. In fact, the growth in uptake of ETFs here is far higher than the global average, and Europe is a major contributor to the shape and size of the global market. European ETFs will surpass US$500 billion any day now, and by 2019 when the industry emerges from its teenage years, we expect them to be greater than US$1 trillion within a global market of US$6 trillion."