Individual investors and financial advisors have continued to migrate online to find pertinent information about new products, portfolio construction and overall investing education. The web has democratized investing information and allowed everyone access to sophisticated tools and data. Mitre Media – parent company of MutualFunds.com – has long been a leader in providing top-notch tools, content and education for investors both big and small. And Mitre Media is taking another step forward in that mission.

Mitre Media is proud to announce that it has merged its premium exchange traded fund (ETF) brand, ETF Database, with the global leader in virtual ETF education, ETF Trends. The combination will create the largest ETF-centric and data driven platform designed to empower financial advisors and modern individual investors. The brands will remain as stand-alone independent digital properties. However, the partnership will allow the websites to integrate tools, content, video and other assets.

A newly created parent company called ETF Flows LLC will house the ETF Trends and ETFdb Brands. Former Mitre Media Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tom Hendrickson will provide operational oversight of the new firm and continue as Chairman of the Board at Mitre Media. Mitre Media President George Minett has been appointed to the role of CEO of Mitre Media.

The merger highlights the explosion of ETF assets and their usage among investors of all sizes. Back in 2009 when ETFdb was founded, total ETF assets were only around $777 billion. Today, that number is more than $3.5 trillion with thousands of ETFs available for investment.

The growth in ETF adoption has affected the mutual fund industry in a big way as well. Investors have been driven to low-cost index funds and out of perceived higher expense and under performing mutual funds. However, not all mutual funds are cut from the same cloth. And in fact, there are plenty of top-notch mutual funds – both active and passive – that have plenty of investment merit, beat their benchmarks and have low fees.

With data from the industry group, the Investment Company Institute (ICI), showing that more than 45.4% of households and 101.9 million individuals hold mutual funds, finding the right fit for portfolios has never been more important. Investors and financial advisors need help combing through the more than 9,350 mutual funds to identify the right investment opportunities.

This is where Mitre Media and MutualFunds.com are ready to continue providing top-notch tools and content. A lot is on the way from Mitre Media in the future. We’re prepared to roll-out several new data-centric tools, various new content varieties as well as premium products designed to help investors cut through the fat and find mutual funds that are worth their investment dollars. The unwavering goal is to continue to bring quality and needed information across a variety of channels to help advisors and individual investors build better outcomes – whether that be short-term like building an emergency fund or long-term such as preparing for retirement.

To quote the new CEO of Mitre Media, George Minett, “I want to express our enthusiasm and excitement about serving advisors and individual investors with our bulked-up capabilities. We have some exciting projects in the works and I look forward to continue driving innovation for our audiences.”

Overall, Mitre Media’s focus and products have always been about helping people invest their savings, independently and affordably. The recent ETFdb and ETF Trends merger and our continued roll-out of new mutual funds-focused content/tools at MutualFunds.com are prime examples of supporting that mission.

For more details, check out the press release.