9 September 2020
Brussels, 9 September 2020 – For immediate release
The Covered Bond Label Foundation (CBLF) is delighted to announce the formal adoption of the new and enhanced 2021 version of the Harmonised Transparency Template (HTT), together with the publication of updated HTT completion guidelines.
The 2021 HTT will be mandatory for all Covered Bond Label issuers as of the end of Q1 2021 and is already available for download here. The revised HTT is the result of the Label’s annual review process undertaken in collaboration with market participants across three continents (Europe, Asia and North America), and was approved during the Covered Bond Label Committee Meeting held on 8 September 2020.
The annual review of the HTT plays a pivotal role in the Label’s efforts to keep pace with current and prepare for upcoming regulatory requirements, allowing for cross-border data comparison in a centralised manner and a harmonised format. The latest changes in the HTT template will affect around EUR 2.0 trillion of covered bonds outstanding as registered on the Cover Bond Label platform.
This year’s updates have proven to be more ambitious than those of recent years as they include a new data section on ESG factors, with a special focus on energy efficient residential and commercial real estate mortgage loans.
The accompanying HTT completion guidelines has also been updated in order to support issuers and help minimise potential misunderstandings in encoding the HTT. The revised guidelines are available for download here.
Commenting on this development, Luca Bertalot, Covered Bond Label Foundation Administrator, said:
“The annual update of HTT is an extremely important exercise aimed at maintaining the quality of Cover Pool asset disclosures at the highest possible level and in line with market best practices. The introduction of the ESG section marks an innovative step forward, reinforcing the transparency and sustainable disclosure best practices for investors and market participants, and serves as a proactive initiative to support the European Green Deal and the taxonomy policy debates.”
The Covered Bond Label is a quality label, the purpose of which is to highlight the security and quality of covered bonds to investors and to further enhance recognition of and trust in the covered bond asset class.
The Covered Bond Label is open to all covered bond programmes that are compliant with the Covered Bond Label Convention and disclose their data by publishing the Harmonised Transparency Template (HTT). More information on all labelled issuers and the Label itself can be found on the Covered Bond Label website at www.coveredbondlabel.com.
The European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) is the platform that brings together covered bond market participants including covered bond issuers, analysts, investment bankers, rating agencies and a wide range of interested stakeholders.
