Inspire Investing Launches First Faith-Based Bond ETF Ever Created

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 11, 2017 (Newswire.com) - 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 Large Cap ETF (NYSE: BLES) and Inspire Small/Mid Cap Impact ETF (NYSE: ISMD), began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on February 28, 2017.

The Inspire Corporate Bond Impact 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. 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."

Robert Netzly, CEO, Inspire Investing

"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 [email protected].

¹ Inspire, the adviser, provides the index for the Inspire Funds to track. The indexes use software that analyzes publicly available data relating to the primary business activities, products and services, philanthropy, legal activities, policies and practices when assigning Inspire Impact Scores to a company. The securities with the highest Inspire Impact Scores are included in the Indexes and are equally weighted. As the Fund may not fully replicate the Index, it is subject to the risk that investment management strategy may not produce the intended results.

² The Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index is a broad-based flagship benchmark that measures the investment grade, U.S. dollar-denominated, fixed-rate taxable bond market. The index includes Treasuries, government-related and corporate securities, MBS (agency fixed-rate and hybrid ARM pass-throughs), ABS and CMBS (agency and non-agency).

The Inspire ETFs are new with a limited history of operations for investors to evaluate. There is no guarantee that the Funds will achieve their objective, generate positive returns, or avoid losses.

Fixed income securities value will fluctuate with changes in interest rates. Typically, a rise in interest rates causes a decline in the value of fixed income securities owned by the Fund. ETF shares are not redeemable with the issuing fund other than in large Creation Unit aggregations. Instead, investors must buy or sell ETF Shares in the secondary market with the assistance of a stockbroker. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receiving less than net asset value when selling. The Funds may focus their investments in securities of a particular industry to the extent the Index does. This may cause the Fund's net asset value to fluctuate more than that of a fund that does not focus on a particular industry. 

The Funds are not actively managed and the Adviser will not sell shares of an equity security due to current or projected underperformance of a security, industry or sector, unless that security is removed from the Index or the selling of shares of that security is otherwise required upon a rebalancing of the Index as addressed in the Index methodology. Tracking error may occur because of imperfect correlation between the Fund's holdings of portfolio securities and those in the Index. The Fund's use of a representative sampling approach, if used, could result in its holding a smaller number of securities than are in the Index. To the extent the assets in the Funds are smaller, these risks will be greater.

Before investing, consider the funds' investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. To obtain a prospectus which contains this and other information, call 877.658.9473, or visit http://www.inspireetf.com. Read it carefully. The Inspire ETFs are distributed by Northern Lights Distributors, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. 

Inspire and Northern Lights Distributors, LLC are not affiliated. NLD# 5459-NLD-07/07/2017

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About Inspire Investing
Founded in 2015, and headquartered in the Silicon Valley of California, Inspire Investing seeks to create meaningful impact in the lives of people across the globe by providing low cost, high impact investments and is a leading authority in the Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) movement. For more information, visit www.inspireinvesting.com.

* Disclaimer: Investment advisory services offered through CWM Advisors, LLC dba Inspire, a Registered Investment Advisor.

Media contact:
Eric Smyth
Media Relations
(831)382-6572
[email protected]

Source: Inspire Investing