KIE vs PFI

KIEAState Street SPDR S&P Insurance ETF

PFIDInvesco Dorsey Wright Financial Momentum ETF

In short

KIE Most financial-sector funds are banks with a side of insurance. KIE flips it: roughly 50 insurance stocks and nothing else, running since 2005 at a price below the typical broad-financials fund.

PFI Most financials ETFs own the whole sector and let market cap sort it out. PFI runs a momentum screen instead: Dorsey Wright relative-strength rules pick a few dozen financial stocks and reshuffle them every quarter.

Stated mandate

KIE The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return performance of the S&P Insurance Select Industry Index.

PFI The fund is based on the Dorsey Wright Financials Technical Leaders Index, which is designed to identify companies demonstrating relative strength, or momentum.

Why people hold it

• KIE 0.35% a year, under the 0.44% median for its financials peer group, and modest for a single-industry slice.
• Trading since 2005, through the financial crisis and every rate cycle since.
• One of the more actively traded funds in its category, which typically shows up as tighter bid-ask spreads for the people buying it.
• Roughly 50 insurance names, few enough to actually read the holdings list, with distributions paid quarterly.ssga.com

• PFI The rulebook is the whole product: at least 30 financial-sector names drawn from the Nasdaq US Benchmark universe on price strength, rebalanced and reconstituted quarterly.nasdaq.comnasdaq.com 2
• Running since 2006, so the strategy has a long public record across rate cycles, the financial crisis and the bank stress that followed. Distributions land quarterly.
• Concentrated by design, a few dozen holdings instead of the full sector, with quarterly resets that can tilt toward banks, insurers, exchanges or payments as leadership shifts.invesco.com

Worth knowing

• KIE Broad financials rivals like XLF and VFH charge closer to 0.08%. The insurance-only focus costs extra.
• One industry, about 50 stocks: catastrophe losses, reserve surprises and rate swings hit the whole basket at once.
• Insurance is a slice of the financial sector, not a stand-in for it. Banks, exchanges and payment networks sit outside this index.ssga.com

• PFI Costs 0.60% net of a waiver through August 31, 2028 (0.78% gross), above the category median and well above plain sector beta such as XLF at 0.08% or VFH at 0.09%.
• A small fund that trades lightly, so spreads can run wider. Limit orders matter more here than with the sector giants.
• Momentum buys strength after it appears, so results can diverge sharply from the broad financials sector in either direction, most of all at turning points.nasdaq.com

Full KIE profile⁠

Full PFI profile⁠