MutualFundWire.com: HAPI Birthday to This $434MM-AUM Fund

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Thursday, October 23, 2025

HAPI Birthday to This $434MM-AUM Fund

The team at a $67.5-billion-AUM*, multi-manager fund firm in the Midwest are celebrating a big birthday for one of their index funds.

On Monday (October 20), Kristof Gleich, president and chief investment officer of Harbor Capital Advisors, Inc. [profile], highlighted the recent third anniversary of the Harbor Human Capital Factor US Large Cap ETF (HAPI on the NYSE Arca). Chicago-based Harbor serves as investment advisor to the ETF.

A fund reaching its third birthday can be a key marketing and distribution milestone, as many intermediaries and screening tools will automatically exclude funds and strategies without three-year track records.

HAPI launch on October 12, 2022 as the Harbor Corporate Culture ETF (though with the same ticker), then rebranded as the Harbor Human Capital Factor US Large Cap ETF less than a year later, on September 5, 2023. The fund comes with an expense ratio of 35 basis points (down 1bps from inception), and as of today is about $434.029 million in AUM.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) serves as HAPI's index developer. The ETF is designed to track the Human Capital Factor Large Cap Index (which prior to August 1, 2025 was known as the CIBC Human Capital Index); that index is built around the "Human Capital Factor" developed by Irrational Capital LLC.

HAPI has a three-person Harbor PM team:

Stephen Cook, senior vice president and head of ETFs, markets, and trading;

Elizabeth Despain, associate index portfolio manger; and

James Erceg, executive vice president and head of product.

Despain joined the HAPI PM team in March 2025, while Erceg and Cook have PMed the fund since inception.

Gleich describes HAPI as being powered by "a philosophy about what drives long-term value."

"We launched HAPI with a simple but powerful belief: that people, the workforces in a company, are the force behind that company," Gleich states. "Three years in, we've seen that thesis validated. Companies that treat their employees as partners are consistently rewarded in the marketplace."

HAPI is a series of Harbor ETF Trust. The ETF's other service providers include:

Ernst & Young LLP as independent accounting firm;

ACA's Foreside Fund Services, LLC as distributor;

Solactive AG as calculator, distributor, and publisher of the index; and

State Street Bank and Trust Company as custodian, dividend disbursing agent, securities lending agent, and transfer agent.