Why we provide guidance
There are 3 components to regulating Canada’s financial industry:
- Monitoring the financial system for potential risks
- Providing guidance to financial institutions and pension plans on how to minimize risks
- Supervising financial institutions and pension plans to make sure they’re following our guidance
Component 2 is a key element of our role. We develop guidance to respond to identified risks, outlining our expectations of what financial institutions and pension plans need to do. We then use this guidance as a basis for our supervision.
Our guidance:
- helps financial institutions minimize a variety of risks
- supports a healthy and stable financial system
- shows Canada’s leadership in setting global standards
The purpose of our guidance documents
Our guidance documents set standards for activities and behaviour. We expect all regulated financial institutions and pension plans to follow these documents.
Modernizing our policies and guidance
We want to be a global leader in prudential supervision. Over the next few years, we’ll be updating and simplifying our policies and guidance. This will help the industry to better understand and follow our expectations. It will also help us to supervise more efficiently.