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The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada(IIROC) today released its Annual Report for 2016-17. It highlights milestones achieved by the national public interest regulator in the first year of its three-year Strategic Plan, intended to better protect investors and support healthy Canadian capital markets.
"IIROC has made significant progress this year in achieving the priorities set out in our three-year Strategic Plan, including several initiatives that will provide a more consistent level of investor protection across Canada," said IIROC President and CEO Andrew Kriegler. "These efforts, along with the essential regulatory activities carried out every day by IIROC's dedicated staff, provide a solid foundation for future success."
Among this year's highlights:
- As a result of IIROC's advocacy and thanks to changes enacted by provincial governments, IIROC now has the ability to collect fines through the courts in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. These provinces joined Alberta and Quebec in sending a strong deterrent message to potential wrongdoers that they will not be able to avoid paying disciplinary penalties when they break IIROC's rules.
- Alberta also became the first jurisdiction in Canada to provide IIROC with more effective legal authority to collect evidence during investigations, and to grant IIROC and its disciplinary hearing panels protection from lawsuits while undertaking their public interest regulatory responsibilities.
- IIROC signed co-operative agreements with insurance regulators in Alberta, British Columbiaand Saskatchewan, allowing the regulators to share information on investigations and disciplinary actions, as well as enabling joint investigations. These agreements, along with those previously signed with insurance regulators in Ontario and Quebec, prevent wrongdoers from moving to a different jurisdiction or switching regulators to avoid sanctions and hide prior wrongdoing.
- In July 2017, IIROC expanded transparency on its corporate bond information website by extending information published to include all corporate bond trades by all IIROC-regulated firms. IIROC began publishing this information as the Canadian Securities Administrators' appointed Information Processor for corporate debt securities in July 2016.
- To help protect client data, IIROC worked with the firms it regulates to determine their cybersecurity preparedness and providing expertise to firms to improve their capabilities and readiness. In addition, for the first time IIROC created and issued firm-specific statistical reports on the number and nature of complaints and inquires received by the regulator, with the aim of helping firms reduce complaints, strengthen internal processes and improve customer service.
- IIROC completed a review of a cross-section of firms to assess how well they are meeting the best interest requirements of IIROC's conflict of interest rules regarding compensation, particularly around resolving conflicts in the best interests of the client. IIROC published the results to share best practices, identify areas in need of improvement and provide guidance to clarify requirements of existing rules. IIROC also changed its compliance examinations to focus more on this important issue.
IIROC's full Annual Report for 2016-2017 is available in web format and as a downloadable PDF on the IIROC website.
IIROC is the national self-regulatory organization which oversees all investment dealers and their trading activity in Canada's debt and equity markets. IIROC sets high-quality regulatory and investment industry standards, protects investors and strengthens market integrity while supporting healthy Canadian capital markets. IIROC carries out its regulatory responsibilities through setting and enforcing rules regarding the proficiency, business and financial conduct of dealer firms and their registered employees and through setting and enforcing market integrity rules regarding trading activity on Canadian debt and equity marketplaces.
