MSCI recently completed the semiannual review of its global equity index family. The biggest outcome? Increased exposure to BRIC economies.

Surging growth in Brazil and China led to significant company additions from those markets.

All in all, 11 Brazilian companies and seven Chinese companies were added, while only one Chinese company was purged from the indexes. Topping the list of additions were Brazil’s retailer Loja Renner and PDG Realty, as well as China-based Nine Dragons Paper.

“These were the most significant changes in an emerging markets index in quite some time,” Emerging Global Advisors’ Richard Kang said.

According to Kang, the increase in BRIC exposure testifies to the region’s leading role in the emerging markets growth story.

Strong overseas growth also helped a wide array of small-cap companies satisfy the market-cap requirements to be added to MSCI’s global benchmarks. The broad-market Global Small Cap Indexes added 362 securities during this rebalancing and deleted 165.

Among them, the largest additions to the World Small Cap Index were U.S.-based FTI Consulting and Aqua America, as well as U.K.-based Ladbrokes.

Exchange-traded fund investors won’t see a significant shift due to these changes, but all together, they reflect the growing strength of emerging markets and recent outperformance by small-cap names.

A complete list of revisions can be found here.