ShariaPortfolio Review

ShariaPortfolio was founded in 2003 in Florida by Naushad Virji, who got licensed specifically to build an Islamic investment firm after running a hedge fund and real estate partnerships. Two decades later it is a group: ShariaPortfolio, Inc. (the fee-only SEC-registered advisor, CRD #173937, led by CEO Aliredha Walji since January 2022), SP Funds Management (the fund business Virji leads as CEO), ShariaPortfolio Canada (since 2017), and SP International (global clients since 2020). The group reports surpassing $3 billion in assets under management - consistent with the roughly $4.1 billion visible across its five ETFs as of July 2026.

The SP Funds ETF family is the reason most halal investors encounter the firm. SPUS (0.45%, $2.84B) holds about 200 S&P 500 stocks passing AAOIFI screens and has returned roughly 18.7% annualized since inception versus 15.7% for the full S&P 500 - outperformance driven largely by the tech overweight that comes from excluding banks. SPSK (0.50%, $662M) was first to market as a US sukuk ETF in December 2019 and remains the only meaningful listed option for halal fixed income, yielding 4.41% with monthly distributions. SPRE (0.50%) covers Sharia-screened global REITs, SPTE (0.55%) global tech, and SPWO completes the international sleeve. All trade on NYSE with no minimums, work inside IRAs and 401(k) brokerage windows, and publish a Certificate of Sharia Accreditation and Sharia Auditor Report alongside their SEC documents.

Concentration is the honest caveat. SPUS's top five holdings - Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Broadcom - are about 44% of the fund, and SPWO carries an unusual 20% position in Taiwan Semiconductor due to capped-index weighting. Excluding financials and high-debt companies is what Sharia screening does, but it means these funds ride mega-cap tech harder than their conventional benchmarks, in both directions. SPSK also shows a meaningful tracking gap versus its index (1.21% versus 2.68% annualized since inception) - a reflection of fees and the difficulty of replicating thinly traded sukuk markets.

For managed money, ShariaPortfolio runs two tiers plus retirement plans. Express is a Sharia-compliant robo-advisor from $1,000 - legally a sponsored wrap program - offering aggressive, moderate, or conservative models with automated onboarding. Access, from $100,000, pairs a personal advisor with customized portfolios, at least annual reviews, and exclusive access to SP Funds RE, LLC: a private, 100% debt-free real estate fund (no mortgages at all, 1.20% annual fee, accredited investors under Regulation D since 2019). The firm also converts employer 401(k) plans to Sharia-compliant menus through an ePlan partnership - a roughly two-month process - acting as a limited-scope 3(21) co-fiduciary, and shares up to 50% of advisory fees with partner advisors who bring halal options to their own clients. US accounts custody at Charles Schwab; Canadian clients (BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec) get the full registered-account stack - RRSP, TFSA, RESP, RRIF, LIRA, FHSA, even IPP/PPP - with custody at Fidelity Clearing Canada.

In July 2024 the firm launched the first Sharia-compliant target-date funds - 2030, 2040, and 2050 vintages, each in Investor (1.06%) and Institutional (0.65-0.66%) share classes, now distributed on Schwab. The glidepath is real: the 2030 fund already sits at 49% sukuk (SPSK) with a 2.5% gold allocation, while the 2050 fund runs about 76% in growth equity. They solve a genuine problem - halal retirement investing with automatic de-risking - but the series holds only about $20 million combined, and the Investor share class is expensive relative to holding the underlying ETFs directly.

Screening follows AAOIFI: companies are excluded if more than 5% of income derives from prohibited sources (conventional finance, alcohol, gambling, tobacco, pork, adult entertainment, weapons - and notably music, cinema, and broadcasting, a stricter entertainment screen than most peers), or if interest-bearing debt exceeds 30-33% of market capitalization on a trailing twelve-month basis. Non-compliant holdings are removed at quarterly rebalancing. Purification factors are published quarterly per fund - recently about 1.8% of SPUS dividends, 0.5% for SPRE, 2.3% for SPTE - with a free calculator; SPSK requires no purification since sukuk are compliant by construction. Formal governance is the soft spot: Shaykh Umer Khan - a mufti with ifta' from Darulifta Birmingham and a Wharton finance master's - has been the sole named Sharia advisor since October 2022, with Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman attached as an 'Ethical Advisor.' There is no disclosed multi-member Sharia supervisory board of the kind Guidance Residential or Amana's Fiqh Council relationship provides, though per-fund Sharia auditor reports partially fill the gap.