AGEM vs AVSE

AGEMCabrdn Emerging Markets Dividend Active ETF

AVSEAAvantis Responsible Emerging Markets Equity ETF

In short

AGEM A 1990s-vintage emerging markets dividend strategy that traded its mutual fund shell for an ETF in February 2025. Same hunt as always: EM companies paying income today that may keep raising it, now priced intraday.

AVSE Avantis's emerging markets workhorse with a values filter bolted on: the same profitability tilt and thousands-of-stocks build as its flagship EM fund, at the same 0.33% fee, minus the issuers its team flags on ESG grounds.

Stated mandate

AGEM The Fund seeks total return through income and long-term capital appreciation.

AVSE The fund is an actively managed emerging-markets equity strategy that seeks to identify securities with higher expected returns while excluding issuers that raise concerns under the portfolio team's environmental, social, and governance evaluation.

Why people hold it

• AGEM 0.70% net of a waiver through February 28, 2027, against a 1.18% gross fee. That sits near the category median among 27 active EM equity funds.
• The 80% dividend mandate is written into the prospectus, not implied: at least 80% of net assets in EM companies that pay dividend income, filtered by a quality assessment.aberdeeninvestments.com
• Roughly 90 names rather than index-wide sprawl, with distributions paid quarterly.aberdeeninvestments.com
• The strategy predates the wrapper. It ran as the abrdn Emerging Markets Dividend Fund, with share class history going back to the 1990s, before the ETF conversion on February 18, 2025.aberdeeninvestments.com

• AVSE Charges 0.33% a year, roughly half the typical fee among actively managed emerging markets funds. The cost drag stays out of the way of the strategy.
• The screen trims rather than concentrates: the portfolio still spans thousands of emerging markets stocks, not a short list of approved names.avantisinvestors.com
• Active in the Avantis sense: a systematic tilt toward more profitable companies, not a manager's hunches about which stocks pop next.
• Priced level with Avantis's mainstream EM funds (AVEM, AVXC) and JPMorgan's JEMA at 0.33%, and one of the stronger builds in the active EM group.

Worth knowing

• AGEM The systematic crowd is cheaper: AVEM charges 0.33% and DFEM 0.39%, both unwaived. Human stock picking for dividends is the thing you are paying extra for.
• Gross fee is 1.18%. What you pay past February 28, 2027 depends on Aberdeen extending the waiver.
• Thinly traded next to the giant EM funds, which can mean wider spreads, and its record inside the ETF wrapper only starts in 2025.aberdeeninvestments.com

• AVSE Thinly traded next to the index-fund giants of emerging markets, so bid-ask spreads can widen and larger orders need care.
• The ESG exclusions are the portfolio team's own judgment calls, so the holdings and the results will drift from a plain broad EM benchmark.
• Emerging markets equity brings currency swings and country-level political risk, and this fund holds that exposure directly. Pays quarterly.

Full AGEM profile⁠

Full AVSE profile⁠