Spotlight: InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio

Find out who the InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio suits, the fees it charges, how it has performed and how it stacks up against its peers.

By InvestSMART · 17 Apr 2025

By InvestSMART ·
17 Apr 2025 · 5 min read

It's been a little more than decade since InvestSMART launched our first investment portfolios but the Ethical Growth Portfolio is one of our newer options, having made its debut in November 2020.

About the InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio

The Ethical Growth Portfolio invests in a portfolio of five to 15 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with an emphasis on ethical 'growth' assets such as Australian and international shares.

It's best suited to Aussies investing for longer-term goals as the minimum suggested investment timeframe is five years.

Here are a few quick facts about the Ethical Growth Portfolio:

Inception date: 1 November 2020
Suggested timeframe: 5 years
Risk: High
Minimum initial investment: $10,000 (or $4,000 with Fundlater)
Management fee: 0.44% p.a. capped at $880 p.a.
Admin fee: 0.11% p.a. includes buy-side brokerage costs.
Benchmark Index: Morningstar® Australia Growth Target Allocation NR AUD

Where does the InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio invest?

The Ethical Growth Portfolio has a high allocation of growth assets, with 38% invested in international equities and 29% in Australian equities as at 31 March 2025. The remaining 33% is in fixed interest (24.5%) and cash (8.5%).

The ETFs that InvestSMART currently includes in the Ethical Growth Portfolio are:

Some of the underlying ETF holdings include Commonwealth Bank, Apple, CSL, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

What are the fees?

InvestSMART's annual management fee is 0.44%, which equates to $44 per year on a $10,000 investment (the minimum). The management fee is capped at $880 per year for balances of $200,000 or more.

There is a flat admin fee of 0.11% per year, which includes all buy-side brokerage costs. This means you won't pay extra when you invest or add funds. Brokerage fees apply to sell transactions (including rebalances). Brokerage costs are $4.40 per trade or 0.088% of the value of the trade (whichever is higher) and are paid entirely to a third-party broker.

There are also indirect costs charged by the underlying ETFs and for the Ethical Growth Portfolio, these are estimated to be 0.23% a year.

How has the InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio performed?

The Ethical Growth Portfolio has been a solid performer, averaging 7.69% a year since its inception in November 2020. In dollar terms, that means if you had invested $10,000 in the Ethical Growth Portfolio when it first launched, your investment would have been worth $13,870 at the end of March 2025

InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio performance

	1 year	2 yrs p.a.	3 yrs p.a.	SI p.a.¹
Capital return	2.67%	7.97%	3.54%	5.36%
Income return	2.53%	2.84%	2.78%	2.33%
Total return	5.20%	10.81%	6.32%	7.69%

Returns to 31 March 2025. ¹Since inception on 1 November 2020.

How does the InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio compare to its peers?

The Ethical Growth Portfolio has outperformed the majority of its peers over the long term. As you can see from the table below, it has returned 6.32%p.a. over three years. The average return of the peer funds in this category was 5.13% over that same period.

Ethical Growth Portfolio performance vs peers

	1 year	2 yrs p.a.	3 yrs p.a.	SI p.a.¹
Growth Portfolio	5.20%	10.81%	6.32%	7.69%
Peers	6.00%	8.35%	5.13%	7.51%
Excess to peers	-0.80%	2.46%	1.19%	0.18%

Returns to 31 March 2025. ¹Since inception on 1 November 2020.

With a flat admin fee of 0.11% a year and a management fee of 0.44% per year (capped at $880 per year), the Ethical Growth Portfolio's annual fee is lower than the average fee of its peer funds, which is sitting at 1.12% a year at the time of writing.

Key takeouts

The InvestSMART Ethical Growth Portfolio is ideal if you are looking for exposure to growth assets to diversify your investment portfolio and would like to focus on sustainable, responsible, and/or ethical investments. It's important to have a long-term view and be comfortable with a degree of volatility as there's a very high allocation to growth assets.

The fees are competitive and, while past performance is not a guarantee of future results, the portfolio's long-term returns have been strong.