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 shares the urgent need to improve the consistency and comparability of sustainability reporting at a global level. We believe this is a crucial enabling factor to the success of the global efforts to mainstream sustainability in the financial sector. A global set of internationally recognised sustainability reporting standards would help establish an effective chain of information from corporates to the benefit of investors.
EFAMA supports the European Commission's initiative to establish the European Single Access Point. We see it as a unique opportunity for the Capital Markets Union to centralise all publicly available ESG and financial transparency information data in one place.
The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) calls on the European Commission to reflect EFRAG´s recommendations for mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards in the upcoming NFRD review.
EFAMA has stressed that global alignment of sustainability reporting standards will be necessary to ensure clarity for investors as Europe moves towards a zero emissions economy by 2050.
EFAMA strongly supports the initiative carried out by EFRAG with the publication of the Exposure Drafts on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). The Exposure Drafts provide key elements framing the architecture of reporting requirements and clarifying the content and key concepts of CSRD. The resulting data will be of crucial importance for investors and for achieving the EU objective to transition towards a zero emissions economy by 2050.
EFAMA welcomes the opportunity to respond to the EC’s targeted consultation on the functioning of the ESG rating market in the EU and on the consideration of ESG factors in credit ratings. Please note that our response covers, at the same time, ESG ratings and ESG data providers, as the demand for ESG “raw” data has been increasing at a steady pace. The use of ESG data has also rapidly shifted from a narrow set of investment products to being prolific across all investment products.
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.*
"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.
