(May 31 – 16:15 ET) – The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions is directing all federally regulated financial institutions to ensure that they are in compliance with their governing statutes.
OSFI identified compliance management as a key in reducing risk in its new supervisory framework released last August. It says that corporate boards and company management must implement policies and procedures to ensure ongoing compliance with the law. Today it released a guideline covering this topic
OSFI’s guideline lays down good governance practices to ensure compliance. It says it will continue to rely on financial institution self-governance. OFSI will review each institution’s compliance management system and it will do some verification, based on the importance of compliance or random examination.
OSFI says it is aware of software products that promise to help automate this function, but it does not specifically endorse this method of governance. “Although OSFI welcomes these initiatives, it is not OSFI’s practice to specify the nature or type of a legislative compliance management system that a financial institution should have in place.”
Nevertheless it expects all federally regulated financial institutions to implement a system by December 31, 2000.
-James Langton