Quilter Cheviot has launched an online training scheme to help financial advisers meet the regulatory changes around responsible and sustainable investing.
The first training session will be dedicated to understanding and managing greenwashing risks.
It will teach advisers what greenwashing is and how they can tackle it in their advice and investment processes.
The continuous professional development training is available to external advisers who do not work under the Quilter umbrella.
More focused training is also being launched internally within Quilter Cheviot and Quilter Private Client Advisers.
Quilter Cheviot head of responsible investment Gemma Woodward said: “With a wave of regulatory changes coming down the line financial advisers will need to reconsider their approach to responsible investing and how these fit into their processes. In this first session we have focused on the anti-greenwashing rule which is expected to come into force later this year ahead of the wider Sustainable Disclosure Requirements (SDR).
“It is crucial that advisers are aware of how greenwashing can come about and how they can mitigate against it. We hope this training module will be a good introductory session, giving them the confidence to assess where they may be able to fine tune and enhance their advice.”
The Financial Conduct Authority’s consultation on SDR, which closed for submissions at the end of January, aims to clamp down on greenwashing in several ways.
It ranges from the introduction of sustainable investment labels to the imposition of disclosure requirements and restrictions on the use of sustainability-related terms in product names and marketing.
The regulator said the reason for the consultation was the “concern” that firms were making exaggerated or even misleading sustainability claims about investment products.
It worried this in turn could lead to an erosion of trust in the market for sustainable investment solutions.
Initially, the FCA aimed proposals at asset managers and their UK-based funds and portfolio management services.
But the regulator has decided to “expand and evolve” the regime to other sectors.
The SDR was originally set to be published during Q2 but will be unveiled in Q3 due to the number of responses the FCA received from the market.
Note to writer. ALL true ‘investment’ must be both ‘responsible’ and ‘sustainable’. If it is neither it is not an ‘investment’. The only ‘investment’ that is invariably both irresponsible and unsustainable is that ‘other people’s money’ spent by government and their bureaucratic Satraps (e.g. the Financial Catastrophe Authority). Those governments and bureaucrats are appalling allocators of capital.
or in short, capitalism (after Adam Smith, not Marx) is automatically responsible and sustainable. Fully ‘ESG’ in fact.
Investment ? I thought greenwashing meant, watering the Lawn ?