RegTech Insight ESG The latest content from across the platform
UK Offers ESG Reporting Guidance to Financial Institutions
The UK’s accounting overseer has issued the first set of guidelines on gathering, using and reporting ESG data. The Financial Reporting Council’s initial report focuses on producing better data to improve decision making among financial institutions. Describing the ESG data landscape as “complex” and “with challenges”, the report offers solutions to overcoming these shortcomings.
A-Team Group-Partnered Publication Looks into the FinTech Crystal Ball
Charting the digitalisation of the financial industry is the beating heart of what we do at A-Team Group. And we are delighted and proud to have had the opportunity to take our messaging further, for the first time co-producing a special supplement on the Future of Finance in a major British national newspaper. The “Future…
Regulators and Anti-ESG Forces Put Data Providers Under Spotlight
ESG data providers have every right to feel under attack. On one side are the regulators, who have made it clear they plan to keep companies like MSCI, Sustainalytics and SIX under their gaze amid concern that assets and funds are being greenwashed. More recently, however, anguished cries of foul play have come from conservative…
Data is Holding Back ESG Sleeping Giant Africa
Africa is shaking off its reputation as an ESG backwater. Major index compilers now offer ESG equities indexes, governments are encoding sustainable finance regulations and green investments are rolling in. Holding back the development of a flourishing sustainable finance market in this ESG sleeping giant, however, is the absence of good quality ESG data. While…
VRF and SASB Amalgamated into IFRS Foundation
The unification of ESG reporting standards took a further step this week when the Value Reporting Foundation, one of the early innovators in setting ESG disclosure guidance and founder of the Integrated Reporting Framework (IRF) and SASB Standards, was amalgamated into the IFRS Foundation. Their functions will continue within the International Sustainability Standards Board, which…
MiFID ESG Requirements go Live, Compliance Caution Urged
The ESG reporting requirement under the amended Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) came into effect this week, with warnings from some market participants that the new regulation would add more costs and challenges to compliance teams. Financial infrastructure and data provider SIX, however, said the obligations needn’t overwhelm firms. “Regulatory complacency is unwise…
UK Turns Focus on ESG Data for Pension Funds
Pension fund managers and asset owners in the UK have become the focus of a number of government initiatives to address ESG data challenges facing the industry. The most recent is a taskforce set up by the nation’s Department for Work and Pensions that aims to identify reliable data and metrics on social factors affecting…
Latest MiFID Update Adds to Firms’ ESG Challenges
Manufacturers of financial products are racing to complete their first ESG disclosures under MiFID II. While the amendment to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive was announced in April last year, the fact that this latest regulation comes into force when the next iteration of Europe’s broader sustainability law is just around the corner has…
SFDR Seen Helping to Fill ESG Data Gaps
The European Union’s wide-ranging ESG regulation has imposed in financial institutions, huge data gathering responsibilities, many of which are a challenge to meet. But the requirements of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation are expected to actually help solve some of the challenges that currently make compliance difficult. In particular, SFDR is seen as a galvanising…
Recorded Webinar: Approaches to ESG data for the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR)
The EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) outlines extensive rules designed to ensure transparency across sustainable financial markets. It also demands huge volumes of non-financial ESG data to be sourced, managed and governed, some of which is difficult to find, and much of which is unstructured and of variable quality. The data challenge is exacerbated…