Vision, reviews, and publications

The AFM’s mission is linked to the sustainability transition in various ways. Our role in this is defined on the basis of this mission. Our supervision, our reviews and the guidance we offer are based on this. The availability and quality of information throughout the chain accordingly continues to be a key focus area for us.

Our vision on sustainability

A great deal of regulation to guide the transition to a sustainable society in a good direction is on the way, much of it from Europe. In our vision on sustainability, we explain our expectations of market participants, and how we will exercise our supervision in this respect.

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Sustainability in Trend Monitor 2022

Climate risks involve radical choices for society, with far-reaching economic effects. We looked at the future of this in the Trend Monitor, our annual publication in which we analyse trends that affect the financial sector and our supervision thereof. We are seeing that public pressure on businesses to become more sustainable is increasing and that new regulation needs to lead to better information on the sustainability performance of financial products.

Review of the use of non-financial information

In 2021, we conducted an exploratory survey of the use of non-financial information by institutional investors and analysts. Hiddo van Kammen, manager of reporting supervision: ‘We saw that large investors and analysts make only limited use of non-financial information. For example, in investment decisions. Companies were also failing to encourage this enough by providing relevant and reliable information. They could have more clearly shown the effects of non-financial aspects on future performance in their reporting. On the other hand, investors were mainly interested in the short term and less interested in the effects of non-financial aspects in the long term. The standardisation of non-financial reporting and new regulation in this area is an important step towards better reporting and use of non-financial information.’

Review of implementation of the SFDR

At the end of 2021, we carried out a review of the application of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which sets out the rules for the provision of information on sustainability. We focused mainly on compliance with the rules for the provision of information in prospectuses. Tanya Pieters-Gorissen, head of supervision of the asset management sector at the AFM: ‘The information given by investment funds on sustainability risks and sustainability characteristics was too general in most cases. It did not give investors sufficient insight into what they were investing in. We shared items of attention that could assist companies to become more transparent. The sector needs to work with this.’

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