portfolio turnover may cause the Fund to incur
additional transaction costs, which have the effect of reducing the Fund’s investment return, and may result in different tax consequences for shareholders compared to a fund
with lower portfolio turnover.
Income Risk. The Fund’s income may decline due to falling interest rates or other factors. This can
occur because the Fund may be required to invest in lower-yielding bonds when a bond in the Fund’s portfolio matures, is near maturity, is called or is prepaid, when bonds in the Underlying Index are substituted, or when the Fund otherwise needs to purchase additional bonds.
The Index Provider’s substitution of bonds in the Underlying Index may occur, for example, when the time to maturity for the bond no longer matches the Underlying
Index’s stated maturity guidelines.
Issuer
Risk. The performance of the Fund depends on the performance of individual securities or other assets to which the
Fund has exposure. The value of securities or other assets may decline, or perform differently from the market as a whole, due to changes in the financial condition or credit rating of the issuer or counterparty.
Large Shareholder and Large-Scale Redemption Risk. Certain shareholders of
the Fund, including an Authorized Participant, a third-party investor, the Fund’s adviser, an affiliate of the Fund’s adviser, a market maker, or another entity, may
from time to time own or manage a substantial amount of Fund shares, or may hold their investment in the Fund for a limited period of time. There can be no assurance that any large shareholder or large group of shareholders would not redeem their
investment. Redemptions of a large number of Fund shares could require the Fund to dispose of assets to meet the
redemption requests, which can accelerate the realization of taxable income and/or capital gains and cause the Fund to make taxable distributions to its shareholders earlier than the Fund otherwise would have. In addition, under certain circumstances,
non-redeeming shareholders may be treated as receiving a disproportionately large taxable distribution during or with respect to such year. In some circumstances, the Fund may hold a relatively large proportion of its assets in cash in
anticipation of large redemptions, diluting its investment returns. These large redemptions may also force the Fund to sell portfolio securities or other assets when it might not otherwise do so, which may negatively impact the Fund’s NAV, increase the Fund’s brokerage costs and/or have a material effect on the market price of Fund shares.
Management Risk. The Fund generally does not attempt to take defensive
positions under any market conditions, including declining markets. As the Fund will not fully replicate the Underlying Index and may hold securities or other assets not included in the Underlying Index, it is subject to the risk that the investment strategy of BFA may not produce the intended
results. There is no guarantee that the Fund’s investment results will have a high degree of correlation to those of the Underlying Index or that the Fund will achieve its investment objective.
Market Trading Risk. The Fund faces numerous market trading risks, including the potential lack of an active
market for Fund shares (including through a trading halt), losses from trading in secondary markets, periods of high volatility, and disruptions in the process of creating and redeeming Fund shares. Any of these factors, among others, may lead to the Fund’s shares trading in the secondary market at a premium or discount to NAV or to the intraday value of the Fund’s portfolio
holdings. If you buy Fund shares at a time when the market price is at a premium to NAV or sell Fund shares at a time when the market price is at a discount to NAV, you may pay significantly more or receive significantly less than the underlying value
of the Fund shares.
Operational and Technology Risks. The Fund is directly and indirectly susceptible to operational and
technology risks, including those related to human errors, processing errors, communication errors, systems failures, cybersecurity incidents, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (“AI”), which may result in losses for the Fund and
its shareholders or may impair the Fund’s operations. While the Fund’s service providers are required to have appropriate operational, information security and cybersecurity risk management policies and procedures, their methods of risk management may differ
from those of the Fund. Operational and technology risks for the issuers in which the Fund invests could also result in material adverse consequences for such issuers and may cause
the Fund’s investments in such issuers to lose value.
Prepayment Risk. During periods of falling interest rates, issuers of
certain debt obligations may repay principal prior to the debt obligation’s maturity, which may cause the Fund to have to reinvest in instruments with lower yields or a higher
risk of default, resulting in a decline in the Fund’s income or return potential.
Risk of Investing in the U.S. Investing in U.S. issuers subjects the Fund
to legal, regulatory, political, currency, security, and economic risks that are specific to the U.S. Certain changes in the U.S., such as a weakening of the U.S. economy or a
decline in its financial markets, may have an adverse effect on U.S. issuers.
Tracking Error Risk. The Fund may be subject to “tracking error,” which is the divergence of the Fund’s performance from that of the Underlying Index. Tracking error may occur due to a
number of factors, including differences between the securities and other assets held in the Fund’s portfolio and those included in the Underlying Index; differences in the
timing and methodologies used to value securities and other assets; transaction costs and other expenses incurred by the Fund that the Underlying Index does not incur; the Fund’s holding of uninvested cash; differences in the timing of the accrual or the
valuation of dividends or interest received by the Fund or distributions paid to Fund shareholders; tax gains or losses; differences between the amount and/or timing of withholding taxes on dividends reflected in the Underlying Index from the