Coverage analysis
How much of an ETF can actually be screened
Every fund verdict rests on how much of the basket is visible. Across 150 published funds, 23 sit below the 95% rating gate — and some of those are still ruled out, which is not a contradiction.
1Why one number decides the rest
A fund has no business activity and no balance sheet of its own, so its verdict is a weighted roll-up of what it holds. That makes one figure decisive before any threshold is applied: how much of the basket we can see.
- Coverage is the share of a fund's weight we can match to a screened company. The remainder might be cash, a bond sleeve, a derivative, or a line that does not resolve to an issuer.
- It is a statement about visibility, not about quality. A fund with 70% coverage is not a worse fund; it is a fund we can say less about.
- It drifts without anyone trading. Providers republish baskets on their own schedules and identifiers change, so a fund can cross the rating gate with its holdings completely unchanged.
2The distribution across published funds
150 funds carry a published coverage figure. 11 of them are fully visible; 23 — 15% — sit below the 95% rating gate.
- 100% visible11
- 95–100%116
- 90–95%3
- Below 90%20
3Why a barely visible basket can still be ruled out
This is the question customers ask most often, and the answer is that the verdict is asymmetric.
“Not halal” means the impermissible weight we can already see exceeds the limit. Whatever is hidden can only add to that total — it can never subtract from it — so more visibility could not rescue the fund.
The opposite does not hold. To call a fund permissible we need to be confident the hidden remainder could not push it over, and below the 95% gate it could. So a low-coverage fund is either ruled out on what is visible, or reported as not rated by that method — never cleared.
4The least visible baskets we publish
5What this means for anyone building on fund data
Coverage is not a quality note to put in a tooltip — it is part of the verdict. A screening provider that returns a fund verdict without telling you how much of the basket it saw is giving you a number you cannot size. Every fund response from this API carries the coverage figure alongside the verdict, and every fund page on this site prints it beside the result rather than below the fold.
Key observations
- 1Coverage is part of the verdict, not a footnote. A fund verdict without it is a number you cannot size.
- 2The verdict is asymmetric. Hidden weight can only add to a breach, so a fund can be ruled out at any coverage level but never cleared below 95%.
- 3It moves on its own. Providers republish baskets, so coverage drifts and a fund can change verdict with its holdings untouched.
- 423 of 150 published funds sit below the gate. That is 15% of the set, so this is the normal case rather than an edge case.
Data sources and method
- Coverage figures:
- Akinda's own screening engine, as published on each fund's page. Coverage is the share of portfolio weight matched to a screened company.
- Fund set:
- The 150 published funds carrying a coverage figure.
- Rating gate:
- 95% — the visibility below which no clearance is published, read from the engine's ladder rather than typed here.
How the figures were produced
- Bands are computed from the snapshot, so the shape of the distribution follows the data rather than a chosen cut.
- A null coverage figure is excluded rather than treated as zero: 'we have no figure' and 'we can see none of the basket' are different facts.
- Fully visible means 100% to two decimal places, which is how every surface on this site renders coverage.
Limitations
- This is a snapshot. Coverage drifts as providers republish baskets, and a fund near the gate can cross it on a single refetch.
- It covers the funds we publish pages for, not the whole screened universe.
- The 50% admission floor is tested once at discovery and never again, so funds are served well below it and a 200 response does not mean the basket is visible.
- No return, performance or risk figure appears anywhere in this report. We screen for compliance and do not measure investment outcomes.
Measured 2026-10-21. This is screening data presented for information. It is not investment advice, it is not a religious ruling, and the standards named in it are the work of their own scholars and boards.
Common questions
What does basket coverage mean?
The share of a fund's weight we can match to a company we screen. A fund holding 500 stocks where we can identify and screen 97% of the weight has 97% coverage; the remaining 3% might be cash, a bond sleeve, a derivative or a line we cannot resolve to an issuer. It is a statement about visibility, not about the fund's quality.
Why is 95% the cut-off?
Below 95% we never publish a fund as permissible or doubtful, because the part we cannot see is large enough to change the answer. The limit on impermissible weight is small, so an unseen remainder of several percent could exceed it on its own. Rather than publish a verdict the data cannot support, the fund is reported as not rated by that method.
Then why are some low-coverage funds still published as not halal?
Because that verdict only moves one way. Not halal means the impermissible weight we can already see exceeds the limit — and the part we cannot see can only add to it. More visibility could never make such a fund permissible, so the verdict is safe to publish. The reverse does not hold, which is why no fund below the gate is ever published as permissible.
Does coverage change over time?
Constantly, and this is the part that surprises people. Providers republish baskets on their own schedules and identifiers change, so a fund's coverage drifts without anyone trading anything. A fund can cross the rating gate — and therefore change verdict — with its holdings completely unchanged.
Where is coverage shown?
Beside the verdict, on every fund page, above the fold. It is not a footnote: a verdict quoted without the share of the basket behind it is an incomplete statement, and it is the single figure that tells you how much weight to put on the rest of the page.
Keep reading
The funds marketed as Shariah-compliant, each against all five rulebooks rather than ours alone.
Why one rulebook clears a fund another rules out, measured across every fund we publish.
Which companies changed verdict, and whether it was the company that moved or the standard's own limit.
Coverage with every verdict
Every figure on this page comes out of the Akinda API — all five standards, for stocks and funds, with coverage beside each verdict.