Third ACPR-AMF joint report: Monitoring and assessing the climate commitments made by French financial institutions

They notably agreed to end the financing of thermal coal according to a defined divestment timetable and, more generally, to put in place solid sector-wide policies on fossil fuels. In addition, in October 2020, the Minister for the Economy and Finance and Minister of State for the Social, Solidarity and Responsible Economy asked the financial community to develop a strategy for exiting the financing of non-conventional activities.

In parallel, the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR – Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority) and Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF – Financial Markets Authority) took the opportunity to set up a framework for monitoring and evaluating these commitments. This led to the publication of two assessment reports, in 2020 and 2021. The reports summarised the results of the monitoring exercise and proposed a number of recommendations aimed at increasing the transparency of the information published by financial sector participants, and making their commitments regarding fossil fuel policies more credible. They also included a detailed analysis of financial institutions’ fossil fuel exit strategies and their implementation.

In this report, we continue this assessment by providing an overview of banks and insurers’ commitments using the inventory compiled by the Sustainable Finance Observatory. We supplement this overview by a review of the governance of all market players’ commitments. Like the previous editions, this report examines the fossil fuel policies (coal, oil and gas) of the main financial institutions, and provides new estimates of their exposure. It also assesses the implementation of the 2021 recommendations, and makes a number of new recommendations.

The work was carried out by the Authorities based on publicly available information and detailed questionnaires sent out to the largest financial sector participants (9 banks, 17 insurers and 18 asset managers). This was supplemented with bilateral discussions and exchanges.