ETF screening
Funds screened to their basket, not to their name
A fund is only as compliant as what it holds. We screen 3,422 ETFs across the US, UK and Canada by running every constituent through the same stock screening behind the rest of Akinda, then weighting the result by how much of the fund each one is. Rebuilt every night.
3,422
funds screened
3,039
carrying a verdict
8
halal
36
doubtful
Measured 2026-09-27. Verdicts are recomputed every night, so these figures move.
Among the funds we screen
SPY- VOO
- QQQ
- VT
- ACWI
VUSA.L- CSPX.L
- VWRL.L
XIU.TO- VFV.TO
- VGRO.TO
- XEQT.TO
It is the stock screening you already have, rolled up
There is no separate ETF ruleset. Every constituent is screened as a company — the same AAOIFI-based screens, the same four index rulebooks, the same 7,200+ screened tickers across 4+ markets. A fund's verdict is those verdicts weighted by portfolio share.
That is why coverage matters, and why we publish it beside every verdict rather than behind it: a roll-up is only as trustworthy as the share of the basket it could actually see.
How the underlying screening works →How a fund gets its verdict
Five tests, in this order. The first one that matches decides the answer — they are a ladder, not a checklist.
- 01
Is it a weighted portfolio at all?
Leveraged, inverse and long-short funds are set aside first. A 3× product is debt-financed exposure and an inverse product is a short position, so neither can borrow its underlying's verdict.
- 02
How much sits in non-compliant companies?
Above 5% of portfolio weight, the fund is not halal — at any coverage. The weight we cannot see can only add to that share, never take from it, so a breach we can already see is decided.
- 03
Can we see enough of it?
Otherwise we need a usable verdict for at least 95% of the fund's weight. Below that we decline rather than answer from a fraction of the basket.
- 04
And how much is doubtful?
Non-compliant weight plus half the doubtful weight, above 5%, makes the fund doubtful.
- 05
Otherwise
The fund is halal.
The headline verdict is the Akinda fund screen (AAOIFI-derived) — a portfolio-weight test derived from the AAOIFI per-company screens. It is not AAOIFI's income ratio, which is a measure of a single corporation and has no fund equivalent.
Five rulebooks, and they disagree on purpose
Every fund carries five verdicts: our fund screen, plus Dow Jones Islamic Market, FTSE Shariah, MSCI Islamic and S&P Shariah. They routinely differ on the same fund, because they are different standards — different thresholds, different denominators, applied over different sets of holdings.
We publish all five rather than reconciling them into one. A fund that passes the standard it was built to track and fails another is not a contradiction to resolve; it is the information you came for.
The fund screen
Portfolio weight in non-compliant holdings, against a 5% limit.
The four index rulebooks
Each standard's own per-company screens, rolled up over the holdings it rates.
When we decline to answer
383 funds are not rated by this method (measured 2026-09-27), for one of two reasons that the data does not separate: we cannot see enough of the basket to decide, or the fund is leveraged, inverse or long-short and a weighted roll-up would not describe it. A fund whose visible holdings already breach the limit is not in this group — it is not halal, whatever its coverage.
It is worth being precise about the first reason: 249 of them have coverage at or above the 95% threshold and are set aside for the second reason instead. That is why we never describe an unrated fund as simply lacking coverage — and why the coverage figure is shown beside every verdict, so you can tell which case you are looking at.
Questions
How is an ETF's verdict decided?▾
By its basket, not its name. We screen the fund's holdings, weight each constituent's verdict by its share of the portfolio, and apply a 5% limit to the weight held in companies we rate not halal. Nothing about the fund's marketing or its label enters the calculation.
Why do so few ETFs come out halal?▾
Because the limit is on the fund's combined weight in companies we rate not halal — 5% — and a broad-market fund typically holds far more than that in banks, insurers and other businesses the screens exclude. Of 3,422 funds screened on 2026-09-27, 8 were halal and 36 doubtful. The number is genuinely small and moves nightly.
What does “not rated by this method” mean?▾
One of two things, and the data does not distinguish them: either we cannot see enough of the basket to answer responsibly — less than 95% of its weight, with no breach already visible in what we can see — or the fund is leveraged, inverse or long-short, so a weighted roll-up of its holdings would not describe it. In both cases we decline to publish a verdict rather than publish a weak one.
How can a fund be not halal when you can only see part of its basket?▾
Because that verdict only moves one way. A fund is rated not halal when the holdings we can see already exceed the 5% limit on their own — and the part we cannot see can only add to that weight, never subtract from it. More visibility could not make it permissible. The reverse does not hold, which is why a fund we can see less than 95% of is never published as halal or doubtful: it reads not halal, or it is not rated by this method. Coverage sits beside every verdict so you can tell which you are looking at.
Why do the five rulebooks disagree about the same fund?▾
Because they are five different standards. Our fund screen is a portfolio-weight test; Dow Jones, FTSE, MSCI and S&P each apply their own per-company screens with their own thresholds and denominators, rolled up over a different set of holdings. A fund can pass one and fail another, and both answers are correct. We publish all five rather than picking one.
How current is the data?▾
Verdicts are recomputed every night. Each fund also carries the date of the basket it was screened against, because a provider's holdings file can itself be months old — we show that date rather than implying the basket is as fresh as the calculation.
Screen funds from your own system
The ETF endpoints, their fields and the holdings feed are in the developer documentation. Available on Business Ultimate and Business Enterprise.