Vanguard now ranks first among exchange-traded fund providers in adviser loyalty, displacing the long-standing industry leader iShares.

This reversal was driven not only by an increase in ETF producers’ loyalty to Vanguard, but compounded by a decrease in ETF producers’ loyalty to iShares.

This and other findings are contained in the 2010 Advisor Brandscape report that was released earlier this month by Cogent Research.

According to the report, which is based on a survey of 1,560 investment advisers, Vanguard achieves a Net Promoter Score of 33 per cent compared to iShares’ 20 per cent.

NPS is a standardised loyalty metric developed by Bain and deployed across many industries.

These results represent a ten-point gain for Vanguard since last year, and a corresponding eight-point drop for iShares.

State Street/Spiders ranked third overall, while Pimco, finishing its freshman year as an ETF provider, rounds out the list of top-four providers.

The average amount of assets that Vanguard currently captures among the advisers it serves has more than doubled, from USD2.3m per user in 2009 to USD5.5m per user in 2010. This USD5.5m figure now rivals iShares’ per adviser AUM average of USD5.7m.

“Obviously, in terms of penetration, they have a long way to go to catch iShares, but right now the momentum is clearly with Vanguard,” says Cogent principal John Meunier.