*This episode was aired on the Coffee and Regs podcast and is cross-posted here with permission.*
Greg Hotaling is a Regulatory Content Manager at Compliance Solutions Strategies (CSS), specializing in global regulatory matters relevant to the financial industry. Marye Cherry is the EU Regulatory Counsel and Head of ESG at CSS. She is an expert in transparency and regulatory reporting issues in the financial services industry, including ESG. In this special two-part series, Greg and Marye demystify the complicated world of ESG including the latest regulatory developments, the complexity of ESG data, and what ESG actually means for investment managers.
 

 
Issues with Data
“There is a current – and I think it will be a persistent – gap in the available ESG data as compared to the data that’s being demanded by the SFDR,” Marye tells Greg. As such, investment managers may not have all the data they need to comply with coming regulations. They currently rely heavily on ESG data vendors to fill the gap, but there will be some shortfall for quite a while. This problem will be exacerbated for smaller companies, and those outside the EU jurisdiction when the regulation comes into effect, she points out. She is hopeful that proposed amendments to the NFRD and CSRD will bring reporting requirements in line with the demands of the SFDR.
 
Investment Managers Should Know
Greg asks Marye, “If we took what you said and we wanted to wrap it up in two or three bullet points for the investment manager and their compliance department, what would you tell them?” The first thing, she says, is to have a data partnership that can evolve with the demands of the SFDR. She uses the taxonomy as an example of the “piecemeal development of ESG regulation within the EU”. The regulation will continue to evolve. “I think that the starting point is a data partnership that can respond to the evolving compliance challenges over time,” she comments. Having a global outlook is another key point, she says, because ESG regulations are being established in many countries, including the US and UK. The system you put in place should be flexible, and able to deal with the convergence and divergence across jurisdictions. ESG data firms don’t all collect the same type of data, nor do they report data in the same way, Marye says. This poses another challenge. She advises companies to use a partner that’s agnostic to the type of data provided and can process different sources of ESG data. This will put you in a good position once standards become clearer.
 
A Welcome Development
The consensus by companies in the EU is that ESG regulation is a welcome development, as it answers the problem of standardization. It also addresses greenwashing of data. The Netherlands is ahead of the game, Marye says: “The Nordic asset managers have distinguished themselves by being able to classify on March 10th a very large percentage of their product offerings.”
 
Resources
Greg Hotaling on LinkedIn
Marye Cherry on LinkedIn | Twitter