SCHJ vs SUSB

SCHJASchwab 1-5 Year Corporate Bond ETF

SUSBBiShares ESG Aware 1-5 Year USD Corporate Bond ETF

In short

SCHJ Short-dated corporate credit at index-fund pricing. SCHJ tracks the Bloomberg US 1-5 Year Corporate Bond Index for 0.03% a year, sits at the bottom of its category's fee table, and pays monthly.

SUSB Short-dated corporate bonds with an ESG filter. SUSB tracks a Bloomberg MSCI index of 1-5 year investment-grade US corporate debt screened for environmental, social and governance characteristics, at 0.12% a year.

Stated mandate

SCHJ The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index measuring the short-term U.S. corporate bond market.

SUSB The fund seeks to track an index of short-term, investment-grade U.S.-dollar corporate bonds whose issuers have positive aggregate environmental, social, and governance characteristics.

Why people hold it

• SCHJ 0.03% a year, against a 0.19% median for investment-grade corporate ETFs. No peer in the cohort charges less.
• Thousands of individual bonds in the basket, so no single issuer's trouble moves the fund much.
• The 1-5 year maturity ceiling means less price swing per move in rates than intermediate corporate funds like VCIT or IGIB, which sit further out the curve.
• Interest is passed through monthly rather than quarterly, and the fund ranks in the top quartile of its investment-grade corporate peer group overall.

• SUSB Charges 0.12%, under the typical investment-grade corporate bond fund, and the portfolio behind it is one of the stronger builds in that group.
• Maturities stop at five years, so prices move less when rates shift than long-dated corporate debt does. Income is paid monthly.
• The ESG call is not a manager's hunch. It follows the Bloomberg MSCI US Corporate 1-5 Year ESG Focus Index, spread across roughly 1,700 bonds.
• Running since 2017 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, so this is a screened bond strategy with real operating history and real scale behind it.

Worth knowing

• SCHJ This is company debt, not Treasuries. Downgrades and defaults are part of the deal, and short maturities shrink that risk without erasing it.
• A mid-size fund with moderate trading volume, so spreads can run wider than at the category's giants. Limit orders matter more here.
• Launched in 2019, so its record is shorter than rivals that traded through earlier credit cycles.

• SUSB The screen costs extra. IGSB, the unscreened iShares 1-5 year investment-grade corporate fund, charges 0.04%.
• ESG here means MSCI's definition, applied at the index level. If your own standards differ, the holdings list is the place to check.
• Trading is moderate rather than heavy, so spreads can run wider than at the category giants like VCIT and USIG.

Full SCHJ profile⁠

Full SUSB profile⁠