InReg and Veneziano & Partners have released a new information paper, SFDR - Road Map to March 2021, which contains actionable intelligence and is a highly practical tool to help financial market participants with mapping out the steps required to comply with SFDR by March 2021. The European Commission has recently issued a letter to propose the postponement to 2022 of the applicability date of the second level regulation on the Sustainable Finance Disclosures, initially set for the end of December 2020. This announcement of the EU Commission seems to exhibit the concerns expressed immediately before by the Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group.

According to the letter issued by the European Commission, in the absence of binding and final regulatory technical standards, nothing prevents financial market participants and financial advisers from complying with the requirements already laid down by the level one regulation on Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation.

“Fund managers and especially management companies should not relax now and slow down their process of internal implementation of SFDR for March 2021,” comments Jean Louis Catrysse from InReg. “Sustainable Finance disclosures serve different purposes”, he adds, “not only for investors but also for supervisory authorities”. 

“A first step forward and in the right direction is required now,” comments Attilio Veneziano founder of Veneziano & Partners.

“The regulation on sustainable finance does not live a life of its own,” Veneziano adds “and its success is linked to the completion of an iterative process with the other pieces of regulation on financial services affected, like UCITS, AIFMD and MiFID."