An SRI-focused mutual fund shop just substantially expanded its index fund lineup, and it will do so again soon.

Anthony Eames Calvert Investments Senior Vice President, National Sales Manager

On October 30 Calvert Investments [profile] launched the Calvert Developed Markets Ex-U.S. Responsible Index Fund (CDHAX) and the Calvert U.S. Mid Cap Core Responsible Index Fund (CMJAX), each powered by new indexes. Anthony Eames, senior vice president and national sales manager at the Bethesda, Maryland-based Ameritas subsidiary, confirms that several more Calvert index funds are slated to launch next year: a U.S. small cap fund, an emerging market index fund, and a fixed income fund.

"There's nothing formally in registration," Eames tells MFWire.

For a while Calvert's only index fund was the Calvert Social Index Fund. Calvert transformed that fund into the Calvert U.S. Large Cap Core Responsible Index Fund and launched two more index funds, the Calvert U.S. Large Cap Growth Responsible Index Fund and the Calvert U.S. Large Cap Value Responsible Index Fund, in June 2015. With October's new launches and the funds targeted for release in 2016, Calvert's index fund lineup will expand to eight funds in total. They're all powered by the proprietary Calvert Research System research platform.

"We're certinaly not taking our emphasis away from active strategies at all," Eames says. The index fund lineup is "designed to be complementary to our traditional lineup of high-conviction, active portfolios."

Eames says that there are "very few responsible index funds," despite the broad rise of passive investing and the "really growing demand for responsible investing solutions in general."

"We saw an opportunity to provide this suite of offerings based on our research system and the principles that drive our research," Eames says.

Calvert has no "immediate plans to launch any of these in ETFs," Eames says. Yet they can customize separate accounts of the portfolios for clients, and Eames says they're open to making 401(k)-friendly collective investment trust versions, too.

"The retirement space has been an important one for us," Eames says. 

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