Our CEO, Carole Miltgen, joined the 10×6 Female Founders event. 10 women had only six minutes to share their experience on entrepreneurship, founding companies and the challenges along the way.

What does Jude Law have to do with all of this? Listen to the Carole Miltgen’s talk at the 10×6 Female Founders event here.

Paperjam conducted an interview with the Prisma CEO:

What has fascinated you about your field and how has this passion been the catalyst for the creation of your company?

Carole Miltgen. – “I want to be the master of my destiny as I do despise any kind of dependence. After what felt like the end of my world, I didn’t know what direction to take, so I decided to go straight ahead, take my destiny in my own hands and work at my rhythm, creating a company that I would have liked to work for when I was young.

What has been the most valuable lesson you’ve learned during your entrepreneurial journey and how has it shaped your approach to professional challenges?

“Oh, there are so many. If I had to pick just one, I’d say it is consistency. Enthusiasm fluctuates – consistent actions accumulate! This is valid for all aspects in life, not only work life. Whether you want to learn the piano, win a sports competition or run a company. If you rely on your motivation, some days will simply be difficult. If, however, one consistently does a good job, at one’s best ability, one will be successful, because a bad day does not mean a bad life.

How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it contributes to your company’s culture and success?

“ ‘Be the least important person in the company!’ I always considered it my job to create a culture of trust in which this is possible, and I’m happy to see that I have achieved this. My goal has always been to share all my knowledge and slowly let go of the day-to-day activities. I have provided a full toolbox to my team members, enabling them to be their own entrepreneur of their own project in a safe environment. This said, I will always have their back, as ‘being the least important person in the company’ does not mean dropping anyone in the thick of it, but rather trusting and appreciating their own way of handling their work. Mind you, if Prisma was a country, they could hold a coup against me and gain total power if they wanted to, LOL…”

Learn more:

Read the full Paperjam article

10×6 Female Founders

Do you use AI systems to generate machine translation?
Sometimes it’s a bit risky right? What could possibly go wrong?

• Lack of culture nuances
• Limited in technical and specialized domains
• Less precise in specific fields

We can assist with proofreading the translated documents as proofreading is the last step of editing before a document is published or used—your last chance to make sure your writing is as good as it can be.

And failing everything, we can translate your documents to make them look good and easy to understand.

Test us! Ask us about a quote.

2022 will bring many changes to our industry and the related fund documentation.

We are always happy to assist you in all challenges ahead. In order to provide the best possible service to you, it would be helpful for us if you could complete our survey:

If you had 3 wishes that would make your life easier when it comes to ESG/SFDR, what would these be? (multiple answers possible)

• Full support to produce your fund documentation
• Automating updates to reduce delivery times
• Automating updates to improve consistency
• Coordination & communication support between different teams

What are your biggest challenges? (multiple answers possible)

• Filing deadlines
• Volume of updates
• Managing multiple updates
• Keeping updates consistent (across various documents)
• Internal communication between teams/ involved parties
• Translation & integration of updated fund documentation
• Layout

For which documents would you need assistance? (multiple answers possible)

• Prospectus
• Annual and semi-annual reports
• UCITS KIIDs
• PRIIP KIDs
• Factsheets
• Website updates
• Regulatory forms
• Shareholder mailings
• Marketing and sales documents (presentations, brochures, etc. …)

Tell us more about your SFDR requirements in the comments. If you would like you can also fill out our survey here; and send it to prisma(at)prisma.lu. We thank you for your time!

Introduction

The EU has introduced the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) in 2019,appliying to financial market participants (FMP), such as asset managers, banks, financial advisors. The first level has come into effect on 10 March 2021 and will continue rolling out deadlines for disclosures that are required by FMPs. This regulation is focused within Europe but is being adopted by other countries around the globe. Its aim is to assist European commitments on climate control and Sustainability objectives,  encouraging investors to chase greener opportunities which  do no harm to the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).

SFDR Purpose

The purpose of the SFDR is to reorientate FMPs capital towards more sustainable investments. It’s also designed to ensure that all disclosures are transparent, easy to understand and clearly show the sustainability characteristics of their products, by doing this they can also counter greenwashing.

Greenwashing is the process of providing misleading information on how sustainably friendly a company’s products are. Often rebranding or repackaging, saying recycled materials are used, exaggerating this fact when only 5% of their material may be recycled would be some examples of green washing. With the SFDR requiring a paper trail of sources and evidence, they hope to eliminate this misleading information.

SFDR Scope Impacted Funds / Companies

The SFDR applies to FMPs, these are defined as investment firms such as asset managers. The financial products they offer include mutual funds, insurance-based investment products, private pensions among others..

SFDR is applicable to Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), portfolio managed services or Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) funds which are subject to be classified as article 6, 8 or 9 products to clearly show how sustainable a fund is.

• Article 6
  • Covers funds which do not have any sustainable investments and could involve stocks excluded by the ESG.
• Article 8 (Light Green)
  • Covers products that promote ‘E’ or ‘S’ whether or not the investment is made out of ESG components, or the product was not made to have an impact on the environment or society.
• Article 9 (Dark Green)
  • The objective is to specifically impact ‘E’, ‘S’ or ‘G’, and the majority of the components are usually ESG investments.

What do you need to do? Timeline and Documents to be updated

• 10 March 2021
  • (Level 1) SFDR comes into effect, requiring FMPs to disclose SFDR related information at an entity level (i.e, if they comply or explain why they don’t).
• 1 January 2022
  • The first Taxonomy Alignment (Level 1) comes into effect, requiring additional disclosures on climate change. The Taxonomy Alignment is a guiding force to assist SFDR in identifying ‘green’ products.
• 1 January 2023
  • Regulator Technical Standards Final Draft (Level 2) comes into effect. The Regulatory Technical Standard is a guidebook on how to comply with SFDR, defining terms and deadlines for all those it applies to.
  • Second Reference Period (Level 2) – Second Taxonomy Alignment comes into effect, requiring additional disclosures on environmental funds. PAI disclosures at entity level and annual reporting on PAI to begin.
• 30 June 2023
  • Firms that consider PAI must publish annual PAI statements (Level 2) on First Reference Period by 30 June each year on the most recent reference period.

Taxonomy Regulation

The Taxonomy Regulation is a helping force assisting the SFDR in identifying ‘green’ products. It requires additional information on the objectives set out in the SFDR. The first two objectives lie under the climate category, climate change mitigation and climate change adaption. These are considered our first Taxonomy Alignment which is due the 1 of January 2022. We also have the following four objectives:

• the sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources;

• the transition to a circular economy;

• pollution prevention and control;

• the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems.

These are considered our Second Taxonomy alignment which is due 1 January 2023. During the Taxonomy Alignments, all taxonomy related disclosures will need to be updated with this additional information.

ESG and Sustainable Finance; and the role of Europe

Europe has a large role to play here, becoming the world leader in sustainable investments and working toward a greener more sustainable future. We can already see other countries adopting the European SFDR into their strategies or using the EU SFDR as basis for their national legal frameworks such as the UK.

Non-EU investment firms are also in scope of SFDR if they have any products that are marketed in the EU, meaning non-EU firms will be required to make disclosures at the same level.

Pitfalls, things to look out for

SFDR has several pitfalls though, which we should all look out for, given that it’s still in the very early days of development and adoption. Without an industry standard of rating/scoring, inconsistency is a common issue throughout FMPs. A company can have two entirely different ESG ratings from two data providers, as currently this is down to the ESG focus of the one rating.

Data gathering is another issue, putting aside the large quantities and inconsistent data, some investee companies are not yet required to disclose certain ESG related data until later dates, although others are required to release disclosures on this data very soon which leaves a data gap.

As SFDR is still a very early life stage, one can expect through experience and learning, once a higher level of maturity has been reached, that these pitfalls will become non-issues within the next few years.

What can Prisma do

At Prisma, we can help produce and update your documentation in a professional typeset layout, as well as translating these documents into all Western, European and Asian languages.

Worried about distribution of this information across the many platforms? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered there, too. We offer physical and digital mailing distribution and can also create websites to display your disclosures. Find out how we can help today at https://www.prisma.lu/our-services/ or contact us at https://www.prisma.lu/contact/.

Despite the fact that level 2 of the SFDR has been postponed to 1 July 2022, the next Level 1 updates, for your fund documentation, are still required for 1 January 2022.

Let us help you to prepare for the upcoming changes in 2022! Among many new challenges, it’s time to start looking into:

• Information on the sustainability objectives
• Ambitions for the taxonomy alignment
• Declarations on social and/or environmental sustainability
• PAI disclosures at entity and product level

These disclosures must be done to pre-contractual documents, annual reports and websites

2022 will bring changes to taxonomy, MIFID II, etc. We are your reliable partner for your fund documentation.

If you need any support with the above, simply contact us.

The next SFDR deadline is just around the corner with the disclosures for articles 8 and 9 products being required as of 1 January 2022. Good preparation is the key to the success.

If you need any support with this, contact us at esg@prisma.lu

**** 30 June 2021 ****

The new Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) deadline is approaching.

Companies with more than 500 employees need to issue a Principal Adverse Impact (PAI) statement at entity level for the end of the month.

Many parts of the fund industry are laser focused on ESG right now by means of; reporting, advisory, labelling and communication. Paperjam asked the team from Prisma for their views.

How important is it that the fund industry takes action on ESG now?

“It is important that we all move towards a more sustainable and social world. The risk with ESG however is that the fund industry uses these products for marketing reasons only rather than change of mentality. 

ESG is not only an initiative, but a global shift affecting all industries. Today’s generations have built a different awareness for ESG-related factors such as sustainability and social impact.

We find ESG-driven decisions, for example, in manufacturing industries like constructions or automobile, but moving the investments into the right direction is equally important. Offering ESG-based investment products will be essential in the future and might become a new standard.

In conclusion, there is a demand for ESG and the industries will need to work together to make this change. Thus, the fund industry does play an important role, and it is absolutely necessary to take the appropriate actions. 

Read the full article: https://paperjam.lu/article/it-is-important-that-we-all-mo

10 March 2021 is the deadline for funds to publish ESG related information on their website and update their legal documents

We are here to help. Contact us at ESG@prisma.lu

Article published on 24 November 2020 www.igniteseurope.com

Luxembourg has passed a law designed to make its financial services industry more digital, in a move that will enable local lenders and investment firms to electronically store bonds and other assets, Luxembourg Times reports.

Under the new legislation, approved by the parliament of the Grand Duchy yesterday, companies and investors will be able to store digital securities using blockchain technology.

The move comes after local lawmakers approved a legal framework in 2019 that boosted blockchain technology by granting transactions conducted through the technology the same legal status as traditional ones.

Luxembourg Times says the first local real estate fund handed out digital tokens to clients in October last year as it moved to blockchain technology to reduce costs.

Earlier this week FundsDLT, a Luxembourg-based blockchain-based technology platform for the investment fund industry that was initiated by the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, processed a fund purchase transaction that was settled via Deutsche Börse’s post-trade services provider Clearstream.

Zürcher Kantonalbank and Clearstream said this represented their first successfully processed live blockchain-based end-to-end fund transactions, with the two firms highlighting that the processing time for an investor order was reduced from several hours to just a few minutes.

Alfi said at its global fund distribution conference that blockchain would have a “major impact” on the fund industry, affecting the entire value chain from launching to distributing funds, and from managing fund accounts to the settling of trades.

The fund body warned, however, that improvements were necessary to enable blockchain technology to process large amounts of data fast.