PCFI vs SCYB

PCFI—Polen Floating Rate Income ETF

SCYBASchwab High Yield Bond ETF

In short

PCFI Most high-yield ETFs buy fixed-coupon junk bonds. PCFI buys senior secured bank loans whose coupons reset with short-term rates, hand-picked from middle-market borrowers by an active credit team.

SCYB Three basis points for the broad US high-yield corporate market. Schwab undercuts a category where the typical fund charges more than ten times as much, spreading the bet across roughly 1,800 bonds and paying monthly.

Stated mandate

PCFI The Fund seeks total return through high current income and long-term capital appreciation, primarily by investing in fixed- and floating-rate high-yield fixed-income securities.

SCYB The fund follows a rules-based strategy intended to track the high-yield bond market, primarily through bonds in the Bloomberg Barclays US Corporate High Yield Total Return Index and similar derivatives.

Why people hold it

• PCFI Floating-rate loan coupons reset with short-term rates, so the portfolio carries much less interest-rate sensitivity than a fixed-coupon high-yield bond fund.polencapital.compolencapital.com 2
• Policy puts at least 80% of assets in floating-rate obligations and bank loans, largely first and second lien senior secured paper near the top of the capital structure.polencapital.com
• Fishes in middle-market credit (issuers with roughly $75M to $250M of EBITDA) in the US and, to a lesser extent, Canada, a corner broad index funds largely skip.polencapital.com
• Actively managed rather than index-tracking, and it pays income monthly.polencapital.com

• SCYB 0.03% a year against a category median of 0.40%. Even the cheap rivals sit above it: SPHY at 0.05%, USHY at 0.08%.
• Tracks the same Bloomberg US Corporate High Yield index as BKHY, which charges 0.22%. Same map, cheaper toll.
• Roughly 1,800 bonds, so no single issuer's blowup drives the outcome. Rules-based and passive, and it has hugged its index closely.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively and pays monthly, which matters in a corner of the market where getting out cheaply is half the job.

Worth knowing

• PCFI 0.49% a year is active-manager pricing. Index-based high-yield options such as SCYB (0.03%) and HYLB (0.05%) cost a small fraction of that.
• Launched in 2025 with a small asset base and light trading, so bid/ask spreads can run wider than in the category's household-name funds.
• Bank loans sit below investment grade (much of the leveraged loan market is rated B and below), so credit and liquidity risk ride along with the income.polencapital.com

• SCYB High yield means below-investment-grade credit. These bonds behave more like stocks than Treasuries when the economy sours, and the extra income is the payment for that risk.
• Launched in 2023, so it has a shorter record than rivals that have traded through more credit cycles.
• The strategy can hold derivatives alongside the bonds themselves to track the index, one layer beyond plain bond ownership.

Full PCFI profile⁠

Full SCYB profile⁠