AFM publishes Guidelines on Sustainability Claims

The AFM has released Guidelines on Sustainability Claims for financial institutions and pension providers (Leidraad duurzaamheidsclaims). These guidelines aim to help market participants make accurate and clear sustainability claims, given the financial sector’s pivotal role in promoting sustainability.
Sustainability claims encompass any statements or expressions related to sustainability made by market participants, whether in non-mandatory information like marketing or voluntary website content, or mandatory information like that required by the SFDR.
The guidelines are structured around three key principles:
1. Accuracy, Representation, and Timeliness: Sustainability claims must be factually accurate, representative of the product or market participant, and kept up to date to provide an accurate picture
2. Specificity and Substantiation: Sustainability claims should specify their meaning and be substantiated with relevant facts and a clear explanation. Claims that cannot be substantiated should not be made
3. Clarity, Appropriateness, and Accessibility: Sustainability claims should be presented in understandable language, using appropriate sustainability terms, and should be easy to find in various information sources
The AFM supervises adherence to information requirements by financial institutions and pension providers. Sustainability claims by financial institutions must comply with generic information requirements from the Financial Supervision Act (Wet op het financieel toezicht – Wft), ensuring that their information is accurate, clear, and not misleading. For investment fund managers, similar obligations stem from the CBDFR, which defines misleading practices as providing incorrect or misleading information or failing to offer essential information in a clear and comprehensible manner. Pension providers are subject to information requirement standards outlined in the Pensions Act (Pensioenwet – Pw). The AFM’s guidelines provide principles for market participants to follow in order to meet these information standards when making sustainability claims.