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Letter Summary:
A key priority identified by the OSC in this year’s statement of priorities relates to promoting confidence in Ontario’s capital markets. The OSC intends to achieve this through: (i) continued development of the client focused reforms with a second publication of the proposed rule amendments; (ii) continued policy work on embedded commissions with revised proposals; (iii) improved experience for retail investors, including proposed amendments to address the financial exploitation of vulnerable investors; (iv) expanded systemic risk oversight of derivatives with a proposed business conduct rule, development of a registrant regulation framework, amendments to the trade reporting rule and amendments to clearing rules; (v) timely/impactful enforcement actions, including increased visibility of priority case outcomes; and (vi) supporting the CMRA transition. Other key priorities include reducing the regulatory burden by, among other things, improving the OSC website and revising the registration information rule, facilitating financial innovation (while still planning on examining the unit creation process for the actively managed ETF market) and strengthening the OSC’s organizational foundation through strategic workforce planning and modernizing a variety of internal analytical tools.
Overview of the Council’s Comments:
We support the OSC’s focus on promoting confidence in Ontario’s capital markets. As commented in the past, finalizing the client focused reforms and addressing conflicts arising from embedded commissions are in our view paramount to moving the dial on improved investor protection, and we look forward to the revised proposals dealing with these issues. The council remains strongly in favour of requiring registrants who provide advice to clients to abide by a best interest standard. Lastly, the council encouraged all initiatives in the Draft Statement related to data driven governance and analytics, as regulation should in part be based on evidence that new rules are required to deal with a demonstrative regulatory issue.