Sustainability Regulation

What is the difference between an Article 8 fund and an Article 9 fund?

Under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, an Article 8 fund promotes environmental or social characteristics, while an Article 9 fund has sustainable investment as its objective – disclosure categories that became de facto labels driving fund flows. RI’s SFDR news coverage tracks classifications, upgrades and downgrades across the market, and how SFDR 2.0’s proposed categories will replace them.

Why does the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive matter to investors?

The EU CSRD was intended to be investors’ primary source of comparable, audited sustainability data on European companies, feeding SFDR reporting, portfolio screening and stewardship – which is why scope cuts under the Sustainability Omnibus directly affect data availability.

Responsible Investor provides news and analysis of the development and implementation of the CSRD, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) that underpin it, and the Sustainability Omnibus.

What is the UK’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR)?

SDR is the UK’s framework for sustainability-related disclosure across financial products, built around a voluntary labelling regime, an anti-greenwashing rule, and phased entity and product-level reporting requirements for asset managers and distributors. It is being rolled out gradually by firm size, with larger managers already reporting and smaller firms following through the rest of this year. RI has been covering the rollout of the SDR regime and its teething difficulties, from decisions on whether to apply the Focus, Impact, Improvers or Mixed Goals labels to how firms are interpreting the anti-greenwashing rule in practice.

What do the ISSB standards cover?

The ISSB’s global standards, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, set a common baseline for how companies disclose sustainability and climate-related risks and opportunities, covering both general sustainability disclosures and climate-specific reporting such as emissions and transition planning. They are designed to give investors comparable data across markets as more jurisdictions adopt them on a voluntary or mandatory basis. RI’s ISSB coverage tracks adoption progress and how the standards are being implemented and interpreted across different jurisdictions.