Publication
“AI and sustainability - cure or curse?”
While AI can help resolve data issues in sustainable investing, it can create problems such as information breaches and inherent bias in data.
United Kingdom | Publication | April 2021
On April 14, 2021, the Institute of Board Ethics (IBE) published a board briefing summarising the key conclusions and recommendations of a report it published on December 17, 2020, The Ethics of Diversity, on ethics and the diversity of boards.
The report is intended to provide a practical guide on why diversity matters for companies, boards and their stakeholders and it notes that while much progress has been made, especially around gender, the push for diversity has not yet delivered on its full potential.
The report makes ten key recommendations (with accompanying suggestions to help companies meet those recommendations) to embed genuine diversity of thought and life experience at board level. These are as follows:
On April 14, 2021 the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) launched a report highlighting the need for financial institutions to have access to consistent non-financial reporting from corporates to be able to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.
The report provides a detailed inventory and analysis of the key elements and requirements of the European regulatory landscape for ESG disclosures, as well as the voluntary TCFD Framework (The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures), and summarises how financial institutions can navigate these requirements. It breaks down the multiple requirements of the TCFD, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), and Pillar 3 disclosures and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) into distinct disclosure categories, or “pillars” (covering governance, business strategy, risk management, and KPIs) and identifies where common information and metrics can be leveraged across these pillars and the various standards.
The report also looks at the existing and evolving frameworks for climate risk disclosures by comparing the differences, and synergies, between the TCFD and NFRD frameworks. Recognising the practical challenges for firms to capture data from within their organisations to feed into the disclosure requirements, the report maps out information flows, identifying the key divisions within firms which generate sustainability-related data points. It then illustrates how this information either ties into broader entity-level disclosures or relates to product-specific disclosures and examines the interplay with client engagement and communications.
The report also provides practical tips for how firms can approach the governance of ESG disclosures across their organisations and it provides a range of recommendations for policymakers for promoting synchronisation between reporting frameworks, and encouraging simplification of ESG reporting requirements.
(AFME, ESG Disclosure Landscape for Banks and Capital Markets in Europe, 14.04.2021)
Publication
While AI can help resolve data issues in sustainable investing, it can create problems such as information breaches and inherent bias in data.
Publication
It is widely accepted that 2023 was one of the worst years in recent memory for M&A activity.
Publication
The ongoing conflicts and further geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, coupled with upcoming elections in a number of key countries including the US and the UK, make 2024 challenging to predict what impact this will have on the insurance sector.
Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest legal news, information and events . . .
© Norton Rose Fulbright LLP 2023