On September 26, the Asset Management Association of Switzerland (AMAS), the representative group of the country’s asset management industry, published new environmental, social and governance (ESG) self-regulation establishing an ESG framework for collective investment schemes that either ‘produce’ or ‘manage’ sustainable investment products. Under the auspices of AMAS, asset management firms are now subject to binding obligations on a range of reporting, organisational and disclosure activities.
The new self-regulation marks a significant step forward for the Swiss financial market and comes off the back of other regulatory developments that have burnished the country’s ESG credentials in recent times. Notably, AMAS’s self-regulation is deemed to be voluntary, or private, under Swiss financial market law. This means that it is free from state involvement and sits beyond the approval of the Swiss Financial Market Authority (Finma).
