SCHI vs SPIB

SCHIASchwab 5-10 Year Corporate Bond ETF

SPIBAState Street SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF

In short

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.

SPIB The middle of the corporate bond curve in one ticker: investment-grade company debt maturing in one to ten years, thousands of issues deep, for 0.04% a year. Trading since 2009.

Stated mandate

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

SPIB The fund seeks to track the Bloomberg Intermediate US Corporate Index and provide exposure to U.S. corporate bonds with maturities of at least 1 year and less than 10 years.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• SPIB 0.04% a year sits at the floor of the investment-grade corporate group, a hair off the cheapest name in the top tier (VCIT, 0.03%).
• One fund covers the whole 1-to-10-year span. iShares splits that same range across two tickers (IGSB for 1-5 years, IGIB for 5-10).
• Roughly 5,000 bonds spread single-issuer risk thin, and the fund has tracked its Bloomberg corporate benchmark closely.
• Heavily traded, pays monthly, and rates as one of the stronger implementations in the investment-grade corporate peer group.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• SPIB Pure corporate credit. No Treasuries or agency paper in the mix to cushion a widening in company spreads.
• Intermediate maturities move more on rate swings than a short-dated corporate fund such as IGSB.
• The monthly payout floats with market yields and the bonds the index holds. It is not a fixed amount.

Full SCHI profile⁠

Full SPIB profile⁠