The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) has put its planned research into the retail investor landscape on pause indefinitely.
In April, the industry self-regulatory organization (SRO) set out its plan to carry out a research project in 2027 that would require dealers to provide data on their retail clients (to the end of 2026) in an effort to give the regulator, and the industry, an overview of the evolving investor universe.
CIRO predecessor, the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA), had carried out similar research efforts with the fund dealer community — which it sought to expand to the investment dealer sector too.
“Such data will not only be a key resource as we set out to obtain the Canadian investor profile with the objective to understand, inform, and protect investors, but it will also be very beneficial to [dealers] to help deliver greater investor value,” the SRO said at the time.
Now, the regulator says the project is on pause, “in order to focus on other strategic priorities.”
As a result, dealers won’t be required to provide the SRO with data on their clients in early 2027, as previously planned.
The latest pause comes in the wake of past deferrals, and a failed attempt to conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the payoff for the data collection effort was justified.
Originally, the project was slated to require dealers to provide data to the end of 2024, but that was pushed back twice to the end of 2025, and then to the end of 2026. This was meant to give the industry more time to comply with the data demand, while also accommodating the adoption of other regulatory changes that consume firms’ operational resources.
The decision also comes in the wake of a major cybersecurity breach at the SRO that compromised its industry registration data.
For dealers that have already undertaken some work to prepare for the data demand, CIRO suggested that they retain that work, in the expectation that it will “provide value when the project resumes.”