Unitholders of BMO Canadian Government Bond Index ETF have approved, a change of the investment objective of the exchange traded fund, BMO Financial Group (TSX:BMO) announced Thursday.

As a result of the change of investment objective, the current underlying index — the Citigroup Canadian Government Bond Index — will be replaced with a mid term federal bond index, initially the DEX Mid Term Federal Bond Index.

The DEX Mid Term Federal Bond Index consists of semi-annual pay fixed rate bonds denominated in Canadian dollars with an effective term to maturity between 5 and 10 years, a credit rating of AAA and a minimum size requirement of $50 million per issue. The federal sector consists of bonds issued by the Government of Canada (including both non-agency and agency/crown corporations) and supra-national entities. Each security in the index is weighted by its relative market capitalization and rebalanced on a daily basis.

The holdings of the ETF will be adjusted to closely align with the holdings of the DEX Mid Term Federal Bond Index on or about June 1, BMO says.

As a result of the change in the underlying index, the ETF will be renamed BMO Mid Federal Bond Index ETF and its ticker symbol will be changed from “ZGB” to “ZFM”. These changes will be effective June 1.

By changing to the DEX Mid Term Federal Bond Index, investors will now have the ability to focus their investment on the mid-term section of the federal bond market, explains BMO.

DEX is a widely-referenced Canadian fixed income index provider. DEX rebalances its indices daily and uses inputs from 11 fixed income brokers and dealers in Canada to calculate their indices.

In addition, the index change will allow the ETF to be more efficiently managed and, as a result, the annual management fee will be reduced to 0.20%, BMO says.

IE