As of 10 March 2021, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) introduced by the European Union is effective.
The SFDR derives from the European Union's Sustainable Finance Action Plan released by the Commission in March 2018, which was adopted seeking to channel private capital into sustainable projects and activities. The SFDR is composed of 20 Articles that introduce various disclosure-related requirements for financial market participants (FMP) and financial advisors (FA) at entity, service, and product level. It aims to provide more transparency on sustainability within the financial markets in a standardised way, thus preventing greenwashing and ensuring comparability. The SFDR is perceived by the EU Commission as a key regulatory tool, alongside the EU Sustainability Taxonomy Regulation and the EU Paris-aligned and Climate Transition Benchmarks Regulation, to achieve the European Green Deal’s goal to transition the EU to a climate-neutral economy.
In light of this regulation, we reviewed our fund ranged into the categories defined by the SFDR. The full list of these funds can be found at the bottom of this page.
Our full range of investment products can be categorised into three groups:
Sustainable investment products (SFDR Article 9)
These products are required to have an explicit sustainable objective. They must meet “the sustainability test”:
1) The product needs to contribute to an Environmental and/or Social objective + 2) The investment does not significantly harm another sustainability objective; and 3) The investee company has to show good corporate governance practices.
Examples of Article 9 funds can be impact funds or EU Taxonomy aligned funds. Article 9 funds require sound reporting demonstrating that the fund meets its objectives.
ESG products (SFDR Article 8)
Products qualifying under Article 8 are required to take ESG characteristics into account. Like investee companies in Article 9 products, Article 8 investee companies have to demonstrate good corporate governance. Also here, sound reporting has to be in place, to demonstrate that the fund does what it aims to do. Both Article 8 and 9 funds have negative screening in place on activities that ABN AMRO Investment Solutions identifies as being too risky from a reputational point of view and/or not in line with our values (in addition to the exclusions mentioned under Article 6 products).
Other products (SFDR Article 6).
Article 6 funds are non-sustainable funds, however, in most cases they will take Sustainability Risk into account. Sustainability Risk is “an environmental, social or governance event or condition that, if it occurs, could cause a negative material impact on the value of the investment” (SFDR Article 3). Article 6 products consider Sustainability Risk to assess potential negative financial impacts on their portfolios. Next to that, Article 6 products onboarded on ABN AMRO Investment Solutions’ platforms take minimum Environmental, Social and Governance safeguards into account. Like all funds onboarded on AAIS’ platform, these funds exclude controversial countries, controversial weapons, companies that are non-compliant with the 10 Principles of the UN Global Compact and growers and manufacturers of tobacco.
Our delegated ESG and Sustainable Investments1 fund range covers all the main asset classes. A total of 27 funds are managed in line with our Sustainable Investment Policy principles, representing an AUM amount of € 8 billion as per end of September 2021.
For the specific characteristics of each fund, please refer to the relevant prospectus. We explain classification criteria in our Sustainable Investment Policy .