Following the much anticipated release of the EC`s Action Plan on Sustainable Finance on the 8th of March, a High-Level Conference on how best to put the plan into practice took place Thursday last week. BETTER FINANCE`s President Jella Benner-Heinacher took her place amongst influential speakers such as French President Macron and former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg , thereby ensuring that retail investors had a seat at the table during the second panel: Policy discussion on the Commission Action Plan.
Ms Benner-Heinacher spoke on the important role of household savings in ensuring the successful implementation of the Action Plan, and addressed the slow response in terms of supply to the growing demand by retail investors for sustainable investments: ESG funds currently representing less than 2% of the European Retail Fund Market. Although BETTER FINANCE commends the development of the EC Action Plan on Sustainable Finance as a major first step in the right direction, areas of concern remain with regard to the compliance of financial products with investor protection rules, information disclosure as well as ensuring decent sustainable returns. Ms Benner-Heinacher also raised the fact that ESG and SRI labels today offer no concrete proof of actual quality or sustainability, as evidenced by parts of BETTER FINANCE`s substantial research on closet indexing.
To read more about BETTER FINANCE`s response to the EC Action Plan on Sustainable Finance, please see here.