The Danish FSA says pension funds and asset managers in the Nordic country are falling short of their legal requirements to disclose their approaches to corporate governance and sustainability – and it singled out Sampension for official orders to correct procedures.
The financial watchdog said on Friday that it had discovered failures in some cases in a study of six providers (three pension funds and three asset managers), and published a good practice report detailing examples of good and inadequate practice it has observed to help firms improve.
The DKK286bn (€38.2bn) labour-market pension provider Sampension has responded to the official censure, saying that the rules should be made clearer.
The Copenhagen-based authority said: “Pension companies and asset managers must be better at disclosing their approach to active ownership.”
It was important that the supervised entities gave nuanced information about their approach so that investors and customers understood how they used active ownership, the FSA said.
Henrik Brarup Damgaard, head of department at the FSA in charge of ESG supervision, said: “All the companies in the study have published a policy for active ownership.
“However, the policies do not always cover the elements required by law and which are necessary for the public to understand how the companies work with active ownership,” he said.
Sampension rapped over PAI statement
In a separate statement on its investigation into Sampension’s active ownership policies, the FSA said it had found fault with the way both Sampension’s policy for active ownership and its PAI statement – the declaration on principal adverse impacts required under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) – were formulated.
The policy for active ownership was not specific enough and several pieces of statutory information were missing, it said, while the PAI statement did not meet the requirements in terms of form and content, and was generally deficient.
“For example, there is no description of what measures have been taken or planned to mitigate identified negative impacts,” the FSA said.
Responding to the FSA report, Sampension said in a statement on its website that it took note of the reactions it had received.
“During the thematic investigation, Sampension Liv discussed with the Danish FSA the scope of application of sections 176-177 of the Insurance Business Act, including the application of the rules to Sampension Liv’s contractual relationships, and noted in this connection that it would help if the scope were clarified in a future amendment to the law,” the pension fund said.
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