Financial Institutions

Guideline E-13 conveys the expectations of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) in respect of the controls through which Federally Regulated Financial Institutions (FRFIs) must manage legislative and regulatory risk.

OSFI has mandated that all FRFIs have in place an effective Legislative Compliance Management (LCM) process by which they can satisfy themselves and OSFI that they are in compliance with governing laws, regulations and guidelines addressing issues such as:

• Capital liquidity and adequacy
• Insider reporting and trading
• Investments
• Meetings of the board of directors
• Ownership constraints

In recent remarks to the industry, Nicolas Burbidge, Senior Director of OSFI’s Compliance Division, noted OSFI’s continued frustration with late and erroneous filings by FRFI’s.

CRSTL’s Compliance Databases for Canadian financial institutions, developed in cooperation with leading insurance specialist Blaney McMurtry LLP, assist federally regulated insurers, trusts and loan companies in demonstrating their compliance with the LCM obligations mandated by OSFI.

Our databases for P&C and Life insurers and re-insurers include:

• Tailored coverage of the Insurance Companies Act for domestic and foreign branch insurers and re-insurers
• Provincial and territorial market conduct compliance legislation and regulations for each of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories
• Criminal code provisions relating to insurers

Our databases for Trust & Loan companies include:

• The Trust & Loan Companies Act
• Applicable legislation and regulations for each of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories

Our databases for Foreign Bank Branches include:

• All relevant supporting Bank Act regulations pertaining to full-service authorized foreign bank branches

Each database set comes complete with integrated content from OSFI's Supervisory Framework,Regulations, Guidelines and Bulletins as well as federal and provincial privacy and code of conduct requirements. Powered by CRSTL’s CPS™ GRC platform, our Compliance Database for FRFIs offer best-in-class LCM functionality:

• Assessment questionnaires, addressing all regulatory requirements, that automatically flow to employees through pre-defined hierarchies of responsibility
• Electronic employee certification of compliance requirements to ensure role clarity, accountability and engagement with the LCM process
• Notifications tied to a calendar of significant deadlines
• Read-only system access that, at the company's option, can be made available to OSFI so that audits can be conducted off-site