Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations play a crucial role in asset managers' investment decisions for several reasons:
The asset management industry plays a key role in meeting the objectives of the European Green Deal to make the EU’s economy sustainable. Our members integrate ESG considerations across their risk management processes and investment decisions. They develop sustainable investment products and foster transparency to fight greenwashing. This increases choice, trust and, in turn, retail investors’ participation. Overall, such efforts mobilise capital towards a fair and just transition to a climate-neutral economy by 2050.
EFAMA actively contributes to the development and implementation of EU’s sustainable finance initiatives. Among them are a comprehensive transparency framework for financial market participants, standards and labels for green financial products, classification of green economic activities and policies enhancing corporate sustainability reporting.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations play a crucial role in asset managers' investment decisions for several reasons:
In an environment with unclear definitions at EU level on key sustainable finance concepts, as well as a lack of complete, comparable and transparent ESG data, all market actors are concerned about the risk of greenwashing.
EFAMA shares the urgent need to improve the consistency and comparability of sustainability reporting at a global level. Therefore, we welcome the opportunity to respond to the ISSB consultation on the Exposure Drafts on “General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability Related Financial Information” (IFRS S1) and on “Climate-Related Disclosures” (IFRS S2).
The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has published its Investment Fund Industry Fact Sheet for December together with an overview of the net sales data for UCITS and AIFs in 2020.
Thomas Tilley, Senior Economist, commented on the December figures: “Net sales of UCITS and AIFs surged to an absolute record in December 2020, as investor confidence in a successful exit from the Covid-19 crisis continued to strengthen.”
The main developments in December are as follows:
The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has published today its response to the European Commissions consultation document proposal for an initiative on sustainable corporate governance.
As the voice of the European asset management industry, EFAMA strongly welcomes the development of the EU Taxonomy and its proposed technical screening criteria in the Delegated Acts. EFAMA sees the Taxonomy as a critical tool to unleash the potential of sustainable finance in Europe by assisting issuers, project promoters, companies, investors, and other financial market participants in identifying truly sustainable economic activities. |
"It gives me great pleasure to provide you with an overview of our activities since our Annual General Meeting in Paris last year. While we were very much looking forward to hosting you all in Brussels this week, the current crisis and associated travel restrictions has forced us to improvise and turn our meeting into a virtual AGM.
A well-designed EU Ecolabel has the potential to provide clear guidance on the financial products retail investors can invest in if they wish to support environmentally sustainable projects and activities - in line with the EU Taxonomy Regulation. The European Commission wants to create a trusted and verified label for retail investors, who would benefit from better comparability of financial products.
The EFAMA Asset Management in Europe report aims at providing facts and figures to gain a better understanding of the role of the European asset management industry. It takes a different approach from that of the other EFAMA research reports, on two grounds. Firstly, this report does not focus exclusively on investment funds, but it also analyses the assets that are managed by asset managers under the form of discretionary mandates. Secondly, the report focuses on the countries where the investment fund assets are managed rather than on the countries in which the funds are domiciled.