Last year proved to be an ‘historic’ twelve months for the Canadian exchange traded funds (ETF) industry, BMO Asset Management reckons, with more than C$16.3bn ($11.5bn) worth of inflows.

ETF assets under management (AuM) in the country reached just under C$90bn – double the level of five years ago.

In Canada alone, equity ETFs accumulated C$9.7bn of inflows and fixed income ETFs raked in C$6bn.

"2015 was a record-breaking year for the domestic ETF industry," said Kevin Gopaul, BMO AM’s senior vice president and chief investment oifficer,

"This is particularly impressive given the turbulent markets we experienced. It's clear that investors continue to gravitate towards ETFs, both as core holdings and to position their portfolios strategically to address these periods of volatility."

The popularity of ETFs has soared in recent years, attracting global net inflows of $372bn in 2015, according to London-based consultancy ETFGI, a 10% uptick on the previous year.

ETFs open up a variety of investable asset classes and market segments for index investing, all at a fraction of the cost of the typical actively-managed fund.

BMO Asset Management has predicted that by 2021, the global ETF market will double to more than $6trn and the Canadian industry will reach C$250bn.