LKOR vs ZTEN

LKORBNorthern Trust Credit-Scored US Long Corporate Bond ETF

ZTENBF/M 10-Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond Etf

In short

LKOR Most long-corporate bond funds simply buy the market's biggest borrowers. LKOR scores issuers on quality and value first, then builds a 10-year-plus portfolio, for 0.15% net of a waiver through March 1, 2027.

ZTEN Most corporate bond funds smear across a maturity range. ZTEN parks on one point of the curve: investment-grade corporates with roughly nine and a half to ten and a half years left, held in even slices and refreshed monthly.

Stated mandate

LKOR The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Northern Trust US Long Corporate Bond Quality Value Index.

ZTEN The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the ICE 10-Year US Target Maturity Corporate Index.

Why people hold it

• LKOR Bonds get graded on issuer quality (solvency, profitability, management efficiency) and valuation, then optimized toward the best composite scores and rebuilt monthly.northerntrust.com
• Hard eligibility rules: investment grade, ten-year-plus final maturity, $250 million minimum outstanding per bond. Roughly 800 holdings spread the single-name risk.northerntrust.com
• 0.15% net of a waiver through March 1, 2027 (0.16% gross) lands near the category's typical fee and matches screened peer ZTEN at 0.15%. Pays monthly.
• No style drift. The portfolio holds what the name promises: long-dated US investment-grade corporates, tracked by representative sampling, no credit reaching, no overlays.flexshares.com

• ZTEN Precision instead of a range: it targets bonds within about six months either side of the 10-year mark, so the exposure stays a 10-year exposure rather than drifting shorter.fminvest.com
• Even weighting across holdings, which keeps the biggest serial borrowers from swallowing the portfolio the way they can in size-weighted corporate indexes.fminvest.com
• 0.15% a year, below the typical investment-grade corporate ETF fee, with income paid monthly.
• Roughly 300 developed-market investment-grade bonds under the hood, so any single issuer stumble lands as a small slice, not a headline.

Worth knowing

• LKOR Plain market-weighted rivals cost far less: VCLT at 0.03%, IGLB and SPLB at 0.04%. The credit screen carries the burden of justifying the gap.
• A small fund that trades lightly. On any given order the bid-ask spread can cost you more than a year of the expense ratio.
• Ten-year-plus maturities mean heavy interest-rate sensitivity. Prices move sharply when yields shift, and no quality score offsets that.northerntrust.comflexshares.com

• ZTEN The broad index giants cost a fraction of this. VCIT and IGIB run in the low single-digit basis points, but they spread across a maturity band instead of one target year.
• Launched in 2024, still a small fund and thinly traded, so spreads can be wider than in the mega-funds and hurried orders can print away from fair value.
• Ten-year paper swings more with rates than short-dated corporate funds like IGSB. That is the price of sitting further out on the curve.

Full LKOR profile⁠

Full ZTEN profile⁠