San Jose, Calif., July 11, 2017 — Today, Inspire Investing, a leading biblically responsible impact investment firm headquartered in the Silicon Valley, announced it is launching a fixed income ETF to complement the company’s first two exchange-traded funds, which will invest in the corporate bonds of companies aligned with biblical values, as well as support Christian ministry. The first two funds launched by Inspire Investing, Inspire Global Hope ETF (NYSE: BLES) and Inspire Small/Mid Cap ETF (NYSE: ISMD), began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on February 28, 2017.
The Inspire Corporate Bond ETF (NYSE: IBD) will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 11, 2017. The fund provides a low cost, convenient, index-based way for investors to create a purposeful impact by supporting causes such as clean water projects, Bible distribution, efforts to stop human trafficking, and humanitarian relief for refugees.
“There is extremely robust demand from investors and advisors who want to invest in what they believe in,” said Robert Netzly, President and CEO of Inspire Investing. “Following Inspire’s two highly successful fund launches earlier this year, our new fund IBD fills an important fixed income portion of portfolio options. Before today, there has never been a faith-based ETF in the bond sector, and we’re excited to have developed this choice for investors, advisors, institutions and other faith-based investors.”
The funds underlying Inspire Corporate Bond Impact Equal Weight Index is comprised of 250 investment grade short term and intermediate term corporate bonds issued by some of the most inspiring large cap “blue chip” companies in the U.S., as determined by Inspire’s innovative Inspire Impact Score methodology, which measures a company’s positive impact on the world. The index is equally weighted, rebalanced quarterly and calculated on a total return basis in U.S. dollars.
When constructing this ETF, the firm strived to mirror the characteristics regarding maturity, duration, coupon, and credit quality with the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index2 but is sourced from the firm’s proprietary Inspire Corporate Bond Impact Equal Weight Index and not the Barclays AGG Index so as to avoid investments in companies involved in immoral activities such as abortion, pornography, human trafficking and other issues of concern for faith-based investors. IBD provides morally-conscious investors the opportunity to replace core fixed income holdings with an impact focused, biblically aligned ETF with minimal change to the portfolio’s financial characteristics or investor experience. IBD is comprised of 100 percent U.S. investment grade corporate credit exposure. It is designed to be a “core fixed income” holding and to function as the workhorse of fixed income portfolios.
IBD is constructed via a cellular approach divided among four maturity tranches placing 25 issues in each tranche. Inspire Investing has carefully considered credit quality by selecting investment grade credit from among these maturity bands while giving priority to secured debt from among the capital structure. Liquidity is an important aspect of the selection process. Sector exposure was also considered, avoiding excessive weightings of interest rate sensitive categories such as real estate investment trusts and financial companies.
For more information on Inspire Investing, please visit www.inspireinvesting.com.
For media inquiries or interview requests, contact inspire@inspireinvesting.com.
