The Financial Conduct Authority will host an international forum designed to develop tools to tackle the rising tide of greenwashing in financial services.

It will be one of 13 international regulators taking part in the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN)’s Greenwashing TechSprint.

The GFIN is a group of more than 80 international organisations committed to supporting financial innovation in the interest of consumers.

The FCA currently chairs the GFIN’s Co-ordination Group, which sets the overall direction, strategy and annual work programme.

The TechSprint will be hosted on the FCA’s Digital Sandbox and will launch on 5 June and run for three months, ending with a showcase day in September.

The FCA has invited all UK-based firms interested in participating, to apply to take part from 17 April.

It said the number of investment products marketed as ‘green’ or making wider sustainability claims is growing.

The FCA said: "Exaggerated, misleading or unsubstantiated claims about environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials damage confidence in the products and the FCA wants to ensure that consumers and firms can trust that products have the sustainability characteristics they claim to have."

The GFIN has an agreed definition of greenwashing: “Greenwashing is ‘marketing that portrays an organisation’s products, activities or policies as producing positive environmental or social outcomes, or avoiding environmental or social harm, when this is not the case.”

For the TechSprint, the GFIN has developed two 'problem statements', which aim enable participants to focus on the problems that require solving.

Problem Statement 1 - How can technology, including AI and machine learning, enable regulators/supervisors to verify that ESG/sustainability-related product claims to retail consumers are accurate and complete.   

Problem Statement 2 - How can technology help to monitor, collate and identify examples of greenwashing from financial services firms’ websites, social media platforms and other documentation or data which can also be shared across jurisdictions. 

Firms interested in applying to the GFIN Greenwashing TechSprint can review the list of participating regulators via the GFIN website