Nonprofit ETF sponsor Impact Shares partnered with YWCA to launch a new exchange-traded fund that allows investors to deploy capital in companies that have aligned their business practices with gender-equality standards.
"We believe this is an important step in the evolution of women's advocacy," Ethan Powell, CEO of Impact Shares, said in a statement. "YWCA has established themselves as the leading women's organization and the ETF provides them with the tools needed to expand their impact into the private sector and help companies demonstrate leadership on issues impacting women."
The Impact Shares YWCA Women's Empowerment ETF (WOMN) is designed to track the Morningstar Women's Empowerment Index. The index is built with the gender equality data and scoring methodology of Equileap, which represents 200 companies culled from 1,200 of the largest U.S.-listed publicly traded companies based on each company's Gender Equality Score, which is evaluated under a set of 19 gender equality criteria.
Impact Shares, itself a 501(c)(3) charity, donates the net advisory proceeds it receives from each ETF it sponsors back to the collaborating nonprofit partner — in WOMN's case YWCA.
According to Alejandra Castillo, CEO of YWCA USA, the WOMN ETF allows the YWCA to "leverage the capital markets to further our 160-year mission to eliminate racism and empower women."
"The entire YWCA network, made up of more than 200 local associations, is excited about this innovative product that provides the investor the opportunity to generate both financial and social returns, and helps fuel the future of our work," Castillo said in a statement.
This partnership with YWCA to launch WOMN follows the recent debut of the Impact Shares NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF (NACP).
Solactive Launches New Index Combining Three Strategies in One Index
Solactive launched the Adaptive Wealth Strategies U.S. Factor Index, which dynamically allocates across three sub-indexes with exposure to U.S. equities in the large and mid-cap segment. The new index also exhibits characteristics of one of three primary factors: value, momentum and low volatility.
The index will dynamically allocate across the following three Solactive factor indexes: Solactive U.S. Large & Mid-Cap Value 100 Index TR, Solactive U.S. Large & Mid-Cap Momentum 100 Index TR, and Solactive U.S. Large & Mid-Cap Minimum Downside Volatility 100 Index TR.
The weighting is determined by the performance of each sub-index in the past 2 years.
The index has been developed together with Adaptive Wealth Strategies, a division of Carroll Financial Associates, based on its existing strategy. The Adaptive Wealth Strategies U.S. Factor Index will be the underlying for the new Global X Adaptive U.S. Factor ETF.
Envestnet | Tamarac Introduces Enhanced Features for Family Office Reporting
Envestnet | Tamarac announced new enhancements to its Tamarac Reporting platform to help RIAs in single-family and multi-family offices better provide wealth management strategies for their ultra-high net-worth clients.
Through Tamarac's enhanced search engine functionality, RIAs will be able to more easily search within households with complex entity structures. For example, within one multi-generational family household, RIAs can now search specifically for individual members or member groups such as grandchildren to view data specific to their respective accounts.
