FIIG vs SCHI

FIIGCFirst Trust Intermediate Duration Investment Grade Corporate ETF

SCHIASchwab 5-10 Year Corporate Bond ETF

In short

FIIG A bond picker's fund in the most indexed corner of the market: no benchmark to hug, around 300 investment-grade corporate bonds, monthly income, and a 0.49% fee that tells you a human is doing the choosing.

SCHI The cheap middle of the corporate bond curve. SCHI holds roughly 2,300 investment-grade corporate bonds maturing in five to ten years, charges three basis points, and pays interest monthly.

Stated mandate

FIIG The fund seeks current income and long-term capital appreciation while normally investing at least 80% of its assets in investment-grade corporate debt securities.

SCHI The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, an index representing the intermediate-term U.S. corporate bond market.

Why people hold it

• FIIG No published index to follow. The managers choose issuers and maturities inside a mandate of at least 80% investment-grade corporate debt.ftportfolios.com
• About 300 bonds spread out single-issuer risk, and the portfolio has stayed closely aligned with the mandate in its own filings.
• Income is paid monthly rather than quarterly, and the fund has grown to a few hundred million in assets since launch.

• SCHI 0.03% a year against a 0.19% median for investment-grade corporate bond funds. No peer in the group charges less.
• Follows the Bloomberg US 5-10 Year Corporate Bond Index closely, one of the tightest index implementations among intermediate corporate bond funds.schwabassetmanagement.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, the kind of scale that usually comes with narrow bid-ask spreads.
• About 2,300 bonds spread across the investment-grade corporate market, with income paid monthly rather than quarterly.

Worth knowing

• FIIG The fee is the headline: 0.49% a year, against index peers like VCIT and SPIB at 0.03% and 0.04%. Bond picking here carries a real toll.
• Intermediate-duration corporates react to both interest rates and credit spreads, and with a 2023 launch this one has a short history.
• Trading is moderate rather than heavy, so order size and timing matter more here than in the giant index funds.

• SCHI Five-to-ten-year maturities carry real rate sensitivity. When yields move, these bonds swing harder than short-term paper and softer than long bonds.
• Corporate credit only. No Treasuries, no mortgages, and nothing outside the five-to-ten-year window, so it's a slice of the bond market rather than the whole thing.schwabassetmanagement.com
• VCIT, IGIB and SPIB run near-identical mandates at similar cost, so the choice often comes down to index details and where you already hold accounts.

Full FIIG profile⁠

Full SCHI profile⁠