6 Jul 2021
With the recent rapid growth of impact investing and the accompanying concerns over "green-washing" and "impact-washing," the European Commission has been working on a package of regulations to ensure that impact and sustainable finance investments are carried out within a standardized reporting framework. This includes, among others, the recently published Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and associated publications.
e-MFP and SPTF collaborate on EU sustainable finance regulations
With the recent rapid growth of impact investing and the accompanying concerns over "green-washing" and "impact-washing," the European Commission has been working on a package of regulations to ensure that impact and sustainable finance investments are carried out within a standardized reporting framework. This includes, among others, the recently published Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and associated publications. Since April of this year, e-MFP has been collaborating with SPTF and a group of e-MFP members to coordinate the response and activities of financial inclusion fund managers affected by these new EU regulations.
With e-MFP's support, SPTF set up a subgroup within its Social Investor Working Group (SIWG) in order to help financial inclusion fund managers comply with the SFDR as its requirements pose some challenges to financial inclusion investors who are investing in local financial institutions based in emerging economies. This included a joint call with the relevant staff at the Asset Management Unit of the EU Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, which is responsible for the SFDR. As outcome from the meeting, the sector was invited to send written comments and questions relating to challenges that fund managers are encountering when implementing the reporting requirements and complying with the regulation issued to-date. Since then e-MFP and SPTF have been actively coordinating with fund managers to submit questions to the Commission. A special thanks to Amy Bergstraesser from Symbiotics and Mette Kjaer from responsAbility for leading this effort within the SIWG subgroup.
This new engagement also provides the financial inclusion sector an opportunity to share its deep experience in social performance measurement and reporting in the development of the Social Taxonomy that will become part of these new regulations. This effort is being led by the Platform for Sustainable Finance, the expert group advising the European Commission on this matter. The Platform will be conducting a public consultation on the Social Taxonomy during the coming months, and e-MFP and SPTF will actively participate in this consultation.
If you would like to learn more please email contact@e-mfp.eu