It’s American Heart Month, which is about raising awareness of the importance of vascular health. For “ETF Edge,” CNBC’s Frank Holland gets into healthy heart investing via the IndexIQ Healthy Hearts ETF (HART), which donates a portion of fees to support the American Heart Association’s fight against heart disease.
Delving further into this discussion, New York Life Investments’ head of sustainable investment partnerships, Wendy Wong, discusses the mission driving her firm’s HART, along with ETF Trends’ CEO Tom Lydon and John Davi, founder and CIO of Astoria Portfolio Advisors.
With HART’s reliance on a thematic ESG approach that focuses on companies that help prevent heart disease and provide cutting-edge treatment for those diseases, Wong notes several ways this fund is one to support. As she explains, it’s designed to help investors “do well, while doing good.”
On doing well, HART is made up of the companies previously specified. As far as doing good, NY Life Investments makes an ongoing contribution from a portion of HART’s management fees to the AHA. The AHA uses this to support its social impact fund, addressing health and equalities in other resource communities. The growth has made a significant impact, according to Wong.
As far as how this plays out in the ETF space, according to Lydon, he believes this is an excellent example of a fund that’s doing more than just giving people a chance to simply write a check, but actually invest and keep in touch with what’s going with all of the terrific work being done in this space.
“What a great example that we are not only doing right but feeling good about it at the same time, and maybe learning how we can do a better job with our family of how to stay healthy,” Lydon adds.
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