WeeFin was founded on the premise that sustainable finance should be the perfect lever for the ecological transition. However, in practice, financial institutions are facing an accumulation of criticisms: they don't take ESG practices seriously enough, or are accused of greenwashing.
To better understand the reasons behind the general public's mistrust of sustainable funds, this study examines the reasons that are currently holding financial institutions back in their ambitions and leading them to engage in greenwashing practices. For despite all our joint efforts, even the most sophisticated strategies can be accused of greenwashing.
To this end, the WeeFin team undertook an in-depth analysis of the level of ambition and transparency of ESG funds by studying the ESG communication documents of a panel of 50 Article 8 and 9 funds, and in particular the SFDR pre-contractual appendices, which provide a wealth of information on the commitments made and the means used.
Our approach is distinguished by the granularity of its analysis, making it particularly unique. For each stage, the WeeFin team has defined specific criteria, each with a different level of criticality, representing failures (of greater or lesser importance) likely to entail a risk of greenwashing.
Through this framework, funds are analyzed on the basis of these criteria. Each fund is given an initial score of 100, to which penalties are then applied if the criteria are not met. If a fund's score is close to 100, the risk of being accused of greenwashing is low. Conversely, the further away from 100, the greater the risk of being accused of greenwashing.
With this study and our day-to-day work, our aim is to be at the side of financial players to help them overcome these challenges and support them in implementing ever more ambitious sustainability strategies.
It's high time we came up with concrete solutions to get us moving in the right direction.
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