Skip to main content
Insights

Case Study: An institutional allocator enhances its core-plus fixed income allocation by capturing private credit exposure with an ETF

Key takeaways

  • A $60B+ institutional allocator sought to improve the total return potential of its core-plus fixed income allocation.
  • The fund’s manager was reluctant to add below-investment-grade credit risk.
  • Instead, the fund allocated to PRIV, an ETF from State Street that seeks to outperform the risk-adjusted return of the broad U.S. bond market by holding both public and private investment-grade credit.

Investor profile & objectives

The manager wanted to enhance its core-plus allocation by moving beyond typical market exposures. They aimed to increase the allocation’s total return potential without taking on excessive credit risk.

Challenges & constraints

The manager was considering their options in early 2026 and did not want to increase exposure to below-investment-grade credit, citing a poor risk-reward tradeoff in lower-quality securities.

High yield bonds’ option-adjusted spread was 2.59 percentage points on the first trading day of February, 2026. That spread was in the lowest 2% of the 20-year range and 228 basis points below the 20-year daily average.1 The fund’s manager was concerned that narrow spreads and an uncertain macro outlook could limit below-investment-grade credit’s upside while increasing downside risk.

The manager was familiar with private credit through other allocations, but they thought the liquidity constraints typically imposed by private credit vehicles made the asset class unsuitable for a core-plus portfolio.

The ETF solution

In February 2026, the institutional allocator replaced one of its fixed income strategies with the State Street IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV).

PRIV takes an expansive view of the investment-grade credit universe, capitalizing on the fact that much of private credit is investment grade. It seeks to invest between 10% and 35% of its assets in private investment-grade credit, including asset-backed and corporate finance exposures.

The ETF combines expertise from State Street Investment Management and Apollo Global Securities LLC, one of the largest and most established private credit investors globally, with $749 billion in credit AUM.2

  • State Street’s Active Fixed Income Team manages the portfolio, using risk-aware top-down macro insights and bottom-up security selection to construct a portfolio that seeks to overweight the most attractive sectors and issuers
  • PRIV sources private credit exposure mainly through Apollo’s private credit platform

Incorporating investment-grade private credit into a core-plus allocation may help improve total return potential without requiring the addition of below-investment-grade credit risk, while potentially enhancing diversification.

From its February 26, 2025 inception through April 30, 2026, PRIV outperformed the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index by 92 basis points, net of fees, and it ranked first among the 10 largest actively managed core-plus ETFs for return, Sharpe ratio, and information ratio.3 Its information ratio was in the 98th percentile among all core-plus strategies over the same period.4

PRIV maintained broad market exposure alongside these results, with a beta of 0.97 relative to the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.5

Outcome

PRIV enhanced the institutional allocator's core-plus allocation by delivering the potential for strong risk-adjusted performance while maintaining relatively high credit quality. The ETF structure enabled efficient implementation, immediate access to both public and private credit markets, and intraday liquidity.

Learn more

Learn how PRIV may help improve the risk-reward balance in fixed income portfolios.

More on portfolio contruction