Sustainable Finance – Disclosure Templates

16.10.2020

Position of the Association of German Public Insurers on the ESAs’ Survey on templates for Environmental and/or Social financial products

The Association of German Public Insurers welcomes the ESAs’ survey on the details of the presenta-tion of the information to be disclosed pursuant to Article 8(3), Article 9(5) and Article 11(4) of the Regu-lation (EU) 2019/2088. In particular, the ESAs were seeking public feedback on the layout of the tem-plates, which reflects the text of the draft of the regulatory technical standards from its most recent consultation on the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. As Germany’s second largest primary insurance provider with a strong regional presence, the group is committed to constructive dialogue in the interests of all market participants and of a stable European and global insurance sector.

Executive Summary
The Association of German Public Insurers welcomes a simple and standardized representation of prod-ucts with environmental and/or social aspects and sustainable investments. To enable a proper compa-rability between all financial products, the proposed mock-ups need to be adjusted to the presentation-al aspects of insurance products that are linked to the insurer’s collective pool. Furthermore, excessive details discourage customers from taking any note of the information at all. Therefore, the public insur-ers suggest that the ESAs reconsider reducing the depth of the required information in order to guaran-tee a simple, standardized representation and comprehensibility.

Moreover, the extensive presentation is also problematic from an ecological point of view. The Insurance Distribution Directive stipulates the printed issue of the documentation , which in return contradicts the sustainable principle of the underlying regulation. Using icons, graphs and explanatory notes as visual aids is hardly useful as they take up more space than necessary. Alternatively, a link to the website could be provided in order to prevent taking up considerable space so that the representation should not exceed two pages. This is particularly relevant for multi-option-products with several funds at dis-posal.

In addition, the public insurers suggest providing only information that is easily accessible at reasonable costs. Furthermore, the enumeration of the top investments is possible, but does not provide an appar-ent benefit, since insurance companies usually have a high amount of (not green) sovereign bonds in their collective pools. Until a public financial data room is available, the disclosure of information about the ESG rating structure is only possible by working with costly external data providers, which is there-fore not practical.

Contact Persons

Dr Wolfgang Eichert
Department of Political Affairs
Head of EU Representative Office Brussels

T+32 47 6830971
Ewolfgang.eichert@voevers.de

Dr Christian Schwirten
Department of Political Affairs
and EU Representative Office Brussels
Head of Department

T+49 30 22 60 549-22
Echristian.schwirten@voevers.de

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