Ethic

Ethic builds a proprietary sustainability research layer that scores companies on environmental, social, and governance dimensions, then uses that data to tilt direct-indexed portfolios toward or away from specific exposures. Advisors and their clients specify priorities — reduced carbon footprint, faith-based screens, or other custom exclusions — and the platform constructs a basket of individual equities that tracks a chosen benchmark while overweighting or underweighting holdings according to the values criteria. The firm reports that clients have collectively reduced portfolio carbon footprints by more than 400,000 metric tons versus benchmark composition.

The platform offers separately managed accounts built from individual equities, unified managed accounts that combine multiple strategies including direct indexing and listed funds, and model portfolios allocated across listed funds. The offering is centered on public-market instruments — primarily US equities and exchange-traded funds — rather than private equity, venture capital, or real assets.

Ethic executes proxy voting across the individually held securities in client portfolios and has reported voting on over 83,000 proxy proposals to date. The voting guidelines are designed to align with the sustainability and governance criteria that clients have selected, giving advisors and their end-clients a mechanism for active ownership without managing the voting logistics themselves.

No. Ethic does not market directly to individuals, nor does it operate a line of commingled mutual funds or ETFs that it sells to the public. All portfolios are managed within advisory relationships through the RIAs, family offices, and institutions that use its platform.

Ethic sits within the growing sub-industry of direct-indexing and values-based portfolio-customization platforms serving the intermediary channel. Competitors in various dimensions include firms like Aperio (owned by BlackRock), Parametric Portfolio Associates (Eaton Vance / Morgan Stanley), Canvas, and Just Invest (Vanguard). Ethic differentiates by coupling direct indexing with a robust proxy-voting service and a sustainability-research engine purpose-built for advisor-driven customization.