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TD Ameritrade Institutional is making more environmental, social and governance investment choices available to independent RIAs for their clients.
RIAs that custody assets with TD Ameritrade Institutional now have three ways to help provide socially responsible investments to their clients.
Through the Model Market Center platform, RIAs can access investment models that may meet their criteria for ESG, controversial business involvement or carbon footprint. With a few clicks, advisors can invest a client's assets in a way that they feel meets sustainable standards and the client's overall risk tolerance.
These models are currently available to advisors at no additional fee and with no investment minimum for assets held at TD Ameritrade Institutional.
Advisors on the Veo brokerage platform also can apply a screening tool to identify 559 mutual funds that have identified themselves as socially responsible and are open to new investors, including 234 funds that can be traded commission-free.
Likewise, advisors who use TD Ameritrade's ETF Market Center can use screening tools to find and access 63 ETFs identifying themselves as socially responsible, including eight commission-free offerings.
Calvert Launches Fund to Provide Loans to Entrepreneurs of Color
Calvert Impact Capital and Urban Advisors announced the launch of the UP Community Fund, a new impact investing vehicle designed to increase financing available to entrepreneurs of color in the southeastern United States.
Minority business owners have a harder time accessing affordable credit than their non-minority peers, Calvert says, making it more difficult for minority-owned businesses to succeed and build wealth.
This fund strives to address these financing disparities by seeking qualified minority-owned businesses who — with access to affordable credit — can grow their businesses and expand income and wealth-building opportunities for their employees and communities.
The fund will make loans ranging from $250,000 to $1.2 million available to small businesses and community organizations within its target geographic market — including the metro areas of Charlotte, Atlanta, St. Louis and Baltimore, among others. The fund's $12.15 million first close includes Riverside Church, New Resource Bank, MetLife Investment Management and Calvert Impact Capital as lenders. Calvert Impact Capital is also lead arranger and administrative agent.
"The vision of the UP Community Fund is to create a sustainable financing vehicle that can generate focused and long-term impact in communities of color," said Calvert Impact Capital's vice president of syndications and strategy, Beth Bafford. "We are investing — and bringing other lenders to the table — because of the strength of the fund's mission and the team's deep experience in lending to under-resourced communities. The UP Community Fund will create economic opportunity in a part of the U.S. that has historically lacked strong financing infrastructure."
Calvert and Urban Advisors chose the southeast because it is the least upwardly mobile region for African-American communities in the United States. The fund's initial target market was chosen to bring economic opportunity to companies led by entrepreneurs of color as well as those seeking to diversify workforces to create quality employment.
Salt Financial Launches First ETF Powered By truBeta
Salt Financial launched the Salt truBeta High Exposure ETF (SLT), which uses the firm's proprietary truBeta forecast and is designed as an alternative to complex leveraged products.
The ETF tracks the Salt truBeta High Exposure Index, offering magnified exposure to U.S. equities without borrowing or derivatives.
Salt Financial aims to give investors portfolio construction tools to provide an opportunity for outperformance without the use of leverage in their portfolios.
