A few years ago, the saver in search of a responsible investment struggled to find the shoe to his feet as the offer was poor. Today, the problem is quite different! Faced with a choice that has become bloated, he finds himself powerless to identify the media that really meet his expectations.
The SRI label (socially responsible investment) should be a guarantee of security. But not far from 700 funds, whose assets represent 5.8% of the financial savings of French households, currently wear this public seal, also in turmoil. Indeed, the assessment report of the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF), made public in March, draws a harsh report on the SRI label. He considers that, despite its wide distribution, the SRI label is exposed “To an inevitable loss of credibility and relevance”, “Unless it changes radically”. In addition, many products claim to be “Sustainable”, “Impact”, or “Responsible”, without having started a labeling process.
The saver is therefore left to himself to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is a great risk of seeing the concept of SRI misguided, and of seeing savers turning away from it. Aware of this danger, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) took measures in March 2020. The regulator published a doctrine bringing together a certain number of rules in terms of investor information, which is binding on management companies. . The objective: to fight against the risk of “Greenwashing”.
The authority specifies as well as its doctrine aims to “Ensure proportionality between the reality of taking extra-financial factors into account in management and the place reserved for them in communication to investors”, including in the very name of the funds. At the end of 2020, she put a layer back, asking fund managers to use the term “impact” to the greatest extent.
A gradual scale of three levels
On March 10, it was the turn of the European SFDR (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Reporting) regulation on the publication of information to enter into force, for its first level. “The purpose of this regulation is to bring more transparency to end investors on how market players integrate sustainability into their management and financial advice”, explains Sabrine Aouida, regulatory and sustainable finance expert at WeeFin. It has the particularity of focusing on players (management companies, banks, insurers), but also on investment products.
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