Luxembourg Article 8 and 9 funds: New CSSF mandatory data collection on SFDR disclosures in periodic reports

On 30 June 2023, the CSSF published a communiqué to announce a new annual data collection on Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) disclosures in periodic reports for certain Luxembourg funds (or sub-funds)^[1] disclosing under Article 8 or Article 9 of SFDR (the Communication). This follows two previous data collections (i.e., a CSSF data collection applicable to investment fund managers (IFMs) on regulatory requirements in relation to SFDR and a CSSF data collection applicable to IFMs on pre-contractual disclosures in relation to SFDR and the Taxonomy Regulation)^[2]. The data collection aims to digitally capture information contained in the SFDR disclosures in periodic reports and, in particular, on the largest investments^[3] made by each fund during its reference period. The CSSF plans to extend the data collection to principal adverse impact (PAI) statements in the future.

The data collection applies to: 

1. Luxembourg or EU UCITS management companies, in relation to all Luxembourg UCITS they manage;
2. Luxembourg self-managed UCITS SICAV^[4];
3. Luxembourg authorised AIFMs, in relation to all Luxembourg regulated and unregulated AIFs (including ELTIFs^[5]) they manage;
4. Luxembourg internally managed AIFs^[6];
5. EU authorised AIFMs in relation to all Luxembourg regulated AIFs, as well as Luxembourg unregulated AIFs qualifying as ELTIFs they manage;
6. Luxembourg or EU registered AIFMs, in relation to all Luxembourg regulated AIFs they manage; and 
7. IORPs^[7]

Luxembourg exempted AIFMs managing AIFs whose only investors are the AIFM or parent undertakings or subsidiaries of the AIFM or its parents may also voluntarily report data on the Luxembourg regulated AIFs they manage.

This data collection exercise does not apply to funds that (i) were inactive during any time during the reporting period or (ii) had no investment during the reference period. 

The data must be submitted for all funds in scope having a financial year-end on or after 30 September 2022 according to the following deadlines:

• For periodic reports issued between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2023, information shall be provided to the CSSF by 31 January 2024 at the latest;

• For periodic reports issued as from 1 January 2024 onwards, information shall be provided to the CSSF, at the latest, one month after the legal deadline to publish (i.e. 5 months for UCITS and 7 months for AIFs and IORPs after their financial year-end) or to make available the annual report to investors.

The data must be submitted via (i) a simple storage service protocol (S3) which is already available and which allows a certain automation or (ii) eDesk that will be available from 30 November 2023 but which requires a manual input for each fund. 

The Communication includes a separate guide entitled “SFDR UCI periodic data collection – Practical and technical guidance”, with four annexes:

• Annexes I and II describes information to be submitted for an article 8 fund or article 9 fund, respectively based on the periodic reports;

• Annex III requires information on the largest fifteen investments during the reference period to be disclosed by article 8 and 9 funds in their periodic reports, or less if they make-up fifty percent of the investments of the fund; and

• Annex IV describes the codes to be used for closed questions.

Footnotes

_{[1] Thereafter reference to fund in this alert should be read as fund or sub-fund, as the context may require
[2] Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment,
[3] Referred to as top investments in SFDR and the SFDR regulatory technical standards
[4]Société d’investissement à capital variable
[5] European Long Term Investment Fund
[6] within the meaning of point (b) of Article 4(1) of the 2013 Act
[7] Institutions for occupational retirement provision}