Stockholm (NordSIP) – Among local sustainability declarations for funds, Hållbarhetsprofilen (HP) is a true veteran. First created in 2011, the sustainability profile of choice for the Swedish fund industry has evolved and been upgraded several times over the years. A standardised information sheet, HP provides a concise description of a fund’s approach to integrating responsible investment practices, thus complementing the more general factsheet.
On 1 January, Swesif, Sweden’s Forum for Sustainable Investment, announced the launch of HP’s latest version. Swesif’s members have been working on the upgrade over the past two years. According to the press release, HP 2023 is aligned with the EU Sustainability Related Disclosures Regulation (SFDR) and is more user-friendly for both fund companies and the general public. Going forward, the ambition is to make it also compatible with the European ESG Template (EET), the standardised template that fund companies already use to report to distributors.
“We are very happy and proud of the upgrade of Swesif’s Hållbarhetsprofilen,” comments Susanne Bolin Gärtner, Chair of Swesif, who has been actively involved in the project to revamp the tool. “The new version makes the product more relevant and user-friendly, as it is more compatible with the new SFDR rules and its classification of funds under Articles 6, 8 and 9. We would like to thank the Swesif members who participated in the work on this upgrade. Their help has been crucial to the project.”
HP does not claim to be a certification, a label or a quality stamp. It is simply a standard that allows fund companies to report how their funds take into account sustainability in an industry-uniform way. The role and responsibility of Swesif have always been to provide the format and guidelines for the declaration, not to verify any of the information on the platform, as HP is a self-declaration. It is the fund companies themselves that fill in all the information in the documents. The declarations are easy to access on HP’s website and also available on many fund platforms. Fund companies join HP by completing a sustainability declaration for each of their funds and paying a monthly subscription to the service.
Swesif is planning a release party on 16 February to celebrate the launch of HP’s latest version and acknowledge the efforts of all those members who have worked tirelessly on the upgrade for the past months.
