Guidance on the FCA's Guiding Principles on ESG and Sustainable Investment Funds

On 19 July, the FCA published its Guiding principles on design, delivery and disclosure of ESG and sustainable investment funds. Taking the form of a Dear Chair letter, the Principles are a statement of the FCA’s expectations for retail funds sold that incorporate ESG attributes. In the FCA’s own words, “The guiding principles comprise: an overarching principle and three supporting principles that focus, respectively, on design, delivery and disclosure”. The Principles are further defined by ‘key considerations’ and the FCA has helpfully also provided interpretative guidance and examples to help firms. While the Principles are written in an accessible way and incorporate some practical detail on interpretation, including examples, the IA and Eversheds Sutherland have produced joint guidance on interpreting and applying the FCA guidance in practice.

The aim of this session is to take members through the joint IA and Eversheds guidance which will be made available to members after the webinar and will operate as a supplement to the FCA’s document. The joint guidance includes commentary on the FCA Principles, guidance on scope of the principle as well as a section on how we think it interacts with SFDR. To add further value for members the joint guidance also contains some fictitious specimen funds that we have annotated to try to explain how the Principles may apply in practice.

The session is intended to be interactive with the opportunity for members to ask questions, either submitted in advance or at the session.

The report can be found on our Industry Guidance page.