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.
EFAMA sees the European Commission’s proposal for the creation of a European Single Access Point (ESAP) as a crucial step in addressing the limited availability and scattered nature of financial and sustainability-related entity information at EU level.
The asset management industry recognises the much-needed adoption of mandatory European sustainability reporting standards under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) proposal. Insufficient availability of meaningful, comparable, reliable, and public Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data is a key impediment to realising the full potential of the EU's sustainable finance regulatory framework. Financial market participants' sustainable investments need to be driven by real, verifiable and reported ESG metrics of company's activities and financial risks.
Given the increasingly important role ESG ratings and data products providers play in investment processes, EFAMA welcomes the increased attention of regulators to this issue. In light of the growing regulatory scrutiny on the ESG characteristics of potential investments, improving the usability and reliability of the ESG ratings and data products is a key priority for the European asset management industry.
On behalf of:
CDP, Economy for the Common Good, EFAMA, Eurosif, Frank Bold, Finance Watch, Global Witness, Investor Alliance for Human Rights, Publish What You Pay, ShareAction, Transport and Environment, WWF
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
Naïm Abou-Jaoudé, EFAMA President, comments:
Investors, asset managers and civil society organisations call for the prompt implementation of the reform on corporate sustainability reporting and EU standards
The report looks at the major trends in the ESG UCITS market, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and the behaviour of ESG and non-ESG funds.
For this Market Insights, EFAMA collaborated with its member associations and strategy consultants at INDEFI to estimate the level and nature of ESG investment by European asset managers at the end of 2019, distinguishing between the ESG strategies applied at the firm level and those applied at the level of individual fund and discretionary mandate. The assets under management covered in the report include EUR 12.5 trillion of investment fund assets and EUR 11.4 trillion of mandate assets.*
