ESAs launch survey seeking feedback on environmental and/or social financial product templates

On 21 September 2020, the European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA -ESAs) published a survey requesting for public feedback on presentational aspects of product templates pursuant to Article 8(3), Article 9(5) and Article 11(4) of the Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Sustainability‐Related Disclosures in the financial services (SFDR).

The ESAs propose to standardise the disclosure of information for financial products that promote environmental and/or social characteristics or have a sustainable objective. This information concerns pre-contractual and periodic disclosures to be included in existing disclosures provided for under EU sectoral legislation and provided by, for example, AIFMs, UCITS management companies, insurance undertakings, institutions for occupational retirement provision or Pan-European Personal Pension providers.

In particular, the ESAs are inviting stakeholders to comment on the layout of the templates, which reflects the text of the draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) from the recent public consultation on the SFDR that ran from 23 April until 1 September 2020.

The comments are encouraged to provide description of any alternatives the ESAs should consider, and in doing so considering how the alternative approach would achieve the key objectives of the SFDR regarding product disclosures.

The survey is available on the websites of the three ESAs and is open for comments until 16 October 2020.

The survey can be found here.

The press release can be found here.