By Nivedita Balu

TORONTO (Reuters) – JPMorgan’s expanding asset management business in Canada will add up to 20 jobs over the next 18 months, a senior executive said on Tuesday, as the bank launched two actively managed exchange-traded funds for income-focused investors.

“This is our first foray to having (ETF) strategies that individual Canadian investors can have access to,” Travis Hughes, who heads J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Canadian business, said in an interview at the launch.

Future launches in Canada will be focused on actively managed ETFs, he added. “We’re not going to launch mutual funds or other products.”

Toronto is the focus of the expansion, but jobs ranging from analysts to directors will also be filled in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary, Hughes said.

JPMorgan will recruit in Canadian universities as well, he added.

Diversifying assets with downside protection is important over the next several months due to economic uncertainty and the November U.S. elections, Hughes said.

Canada accounts for about $40 billion of JPMorgan Asset Management’s total global investments of $3.3 trillion.