WisdomTree added another exchange-traded fund Wednesday to its lineup of actively managed currency funds.

The WisdomTree Dreyfus Emerging Currency Fund (NYSE Arca: CEW) made its official debut. The ETF provides exposure to a wide range of emerging market currencies. Those include: the Brazilian real, Chinese yuan, Chilean peso, Indian rupee, Israeli shekel, Mexican peso, Polish zloty, South African rand, South Korean won, Taiwanese dollar and Turkish new lira.

The firm already has eight currency ETFs, all but one of them marketed under the "WisdomTree Dreyfus" brand; this is the first of its funds to include multiple currencies bundled together. It charges an expense ratio of 0.55%.

"CEW should be attractive to investors interested in diversifying outside the U.S. dollar or accessing a less correlated asset class," said Bruce Lavine, WisdomTree's president, in a statement.

According to information provided by WisdomTree, the fund equal-weights as many as 12 different currencies, selected according to liquidity and economic as well as regional diversification.

Of the regions that the currencies fall into—Latin America, Europe, Asia as well as the Middle East and Africa—none can represent more than 45% of the fund upon rebalancing.

WisdomTree believes that equal-weighting the individual currencies reduces investor exposure to the volatility and other risks associated with emerging markets.

Since it's actively managed and not tied to an index, the fund can replace any of its component currencies at will, should its managers see the need—a potentially useful benefit with emerging markets, where governments and economic trends are sometimes more unpredictable.

As with all its currency funds, WisdomTree emphasizes that CEW is not a money market fund. But it invests primarily in U.S. money market securities and local currency forward contracts; the portfolio's average maturity is 90 days or less.  

In terms of taxation, WisdomTree says normal capital gains rules will apply to the sales of fund shares. However, income from the portion of the fund invested in U.S. money market securities usually will be taxed as ordinary income, while the tax treatment of the local currency forward contracts could vary with the situation. 

CEW is not the first exchange-traded product to provide access to a bundle of emerging market currencies. Barclays markets three exchange-traded notes covering multiple emerging market currencies; however, many investors have turned away from ETNs in the wake of the credit crisis.

CEW is also cheaper than the Barclays ETNs, which charge annual expense ratios of 0.89% each.

You can read the prospectus for CEW here and a statement of additional information here.

-- This report was submitted by IndexUniverse.com's Heather Bell.