On May 25, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued two ESG related proposals applicable to investment funds. The first proposal pertains to amendments to the Fund “Names Rule”, which adds new requirements for funds that consider ESG factors in their investment practices. The second proposal requires enhanced ESG disclosures by investment Advisers...
The Monetary Authority of Singapore, which is Singapore’s central bank and integrated financial regulator, issued a Circular on 28 July 2022 detailing the Disclosure and Reporting Guidelines for Retail ESG Funds. The new guidelines will take effect on 1 January 2023. A brief summary of the new Circular is as follows. Objective The objective of...
One of the key objectives of the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan is to improve transparency on the sustainability performance of corporates and to reduce avenues for “greenwashing“. Therefore, the EU Taxonomy describes the “environmentally sustainable” economic activities and the financial metrics to quantify the performance of these taxonomy-aligned economic activities. The Taxonomy Regulation requires...
The EU created the Sustainable Finance Action Plan to direct financial flows toward sustainable investments, and the EU Taxonomy is the bedrock of the Sustainable Finance Framework. The EU Taxonomy is a classification system for determining which economic activities are environmentally sustainable or Taxonomy eligible. The objective of the Taxonomy is to prevent “greenwashing” and...
Quantifying risks and putting a risk management system in place are the bedrock of investments. However, while the risk assessment tools for traditional investments are reasonably mature, incorporating climate risks into investments is relatively new, and the tools for climate risk assessments are evolving. In this article, we explore three tools developed to quantify climate-related...
In February 2022, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) published a paper titled “The materiality madness: why definitions matter”. GRI’s corporate sustainability reporting standards, based on the concept of double materiality, are the most widely used worldwide. GRI’s key message in the paper was simple – don’t complicate the idea of materiality. As GRI put it,...
In his blog titled, “Has the backlash against financed emissions begun?”, author Louie Woodall remarks that “Financed emissions” are no longer in vogue. He goes on to explain why “financed emissions” were all the rage in 2021, but is increasingly viewed with skepticism and concerns and why “financed emissions” might not be enough to solve...
The amended European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) and Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) come into effect on 2 August 2022. The changes will affect how investment advisers and insurance firms in EU integrate the sustainability preferences of their clients and policyholders, respectively. The amended MiFID II and IDD are critical components...
Once upon a time, not long ago, there were several rings, or frameworks, for reporting corporate social performance, or ESG performance. There was one for reporting on emissions (CDP), another one only for real estate (GRESB), one for sector-specific reporting (SASB) and several other general reporting frameworks (GRI, CDSB, IIRC, etc). Then in 2015, the...
(This is the third of the 3 part series on Net Zero and includes “What is Net Zero”(Part 1), How to set Net Zero targets(Part 2) and financing emission reduction and Net Zero targets(Part 3)) When setting Net-Zero and Corporate Decarbonization targets, every corporate should be aware of the various financial instruments that can help...
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