The RIA behind VanEck's first buffer ETF

VanEck's first defined-outcome ETF has an RIA in the engine room: Lido Advisors, an independent firm with more than $46 billion in regulatory AUM, serves as subadvisor on the VanEck U.S. Equity Buffer ETF – July (JULV), InvestmentNews reports. That single line in the prospectus marks a different kind of RIA growth story.

The fund is built to absorb the first 20% of S&P 500 losses over an approximately one-year outcome period in exchange for a cap on the index's upside, resetting each July and using FLEX options on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust to produce that payoff.

Defined-outcome products have grown well beyond the firms that invented them: CFRA Research counted them as a substantial share of listed derivatives-based equity ETFs by the end of 2024, and InvestmentNews reports the category has kept drawing large capital commitments. Late last year, Goldman Sachs Asset Management agreed to acquire Innovator Capital Management — a transaction InvestmentNews pegs at roughly $28 billion in assets and one that made Innovator's co-founder and CEO, Bruce Bond, a billionaire.

Lido enters with a client-side history most issuers cannot claim: CIO Jeff Garden told InvestmentNews that the firm's defined-outcome program has grown from a single, basic structure into more than 15 distinct approaches spanning downside protection, diversification, growth and tactical positioning. "It represents a significant share of our assets under management, and we've run it through both bull and bear markets — which is where you learn what a structure actually does versus what it's supposed to do," Garden said.

Garden's case for the wrapper is plain: "Over that time it became clear that the ETF is simply a better delivery vehicle for this type of program: it's more efficient, more transparent, and it lets us extend the strategy beyond our own client base."

Most RIA news runs on a buy-or-be-bought logic: firms acquire a bigger book or get absorbed into a bank. Lido's deal takes a different path, renting the sponsor's distribution while keeping the manufacturing in-house — a useful contrast to the roll-up narratives that dominate the industry.

The trade is real: the ETF carries VanEck's name, and shareholders buy the fund through VanEck's channel, while Lido's brand sits below the sponsor's on the product. Lido keeps its own client book, keeps the team and the process that built the strategy, and likely collects subadvisory fees on every dollar in the fund.

Not every RIA can copy this, because subadvisory work on a registered product demands a strategy with a track record, an options operation that can handle the mechanics of a listed fund, and a firm willing to put the sponsor's name first. Lido has all three, and the payoff for clearing that bar is a growth route that leaves ownership in place — an option to weigh against the next roll-up pitch.

If JULV's first outcome period performs the way the structure is designed to perform, the next subadvisor on a buffer ETF prospectus may well be an RIA, and the next conversation on an RIA owner's calendar will be about licensing the process, not selling the firm.