Whereas traditional SRI indexes focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues this new index will combine the ESG issues with financial criteria.

See Credit Suisse press release:
"Beyond Charity" - Socially Responsible Investments

Credit Suisse will launch in the coming weeks an index that encompasses social responsibility criteria in addition to strong valuation and performance characteristics. The index will be composed of stocks that rank highly on both social responsibility criteria and financial ratios, the latter being defined by HOLT, Credit Suisse's proprietary financial analysis tool. The index will offer investors exposure to a portfolio of stocks that are screened for strong characteristics in terms of corporate performance, valuation and momentum using HOLT's proprietary framework. Coupled with a well established method of identifying socially responsible companies, including assessing political, environmental, labor, and human rights issues, the approach used in the systematic screening process has shown in simulations to consistently identify stocks that collectively outperform the market.