FSRA to launch questionnaires on risk and business practices

The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) will introduce two questionnaires: one to help the regulator identify risks it is unaware of and another to determine a baseline for business practices and compliant behaviour, FSRA representatives said at the 2024 FSRA Exchange event in Toronto on Monday afternoon.

FSRA recently finished designing a questionnaire for its upcoming “intelligence program,” which will help identify pockets of risk the regulator is unaware of, said Swati Agarwal, director, life and health companies and national supervision with FSRA.

The questionnaire will be sent to all insurance companies in Ontario.

“There could be higher-risk MGAs; there could be higher-risk insurance companies. We just don’t know what we don’t know,” she said.

The provincial regulator will also launch a business practice and compliance questionnaire, said Robert Prior, FSRA’s senior manager of market conduct in the life and health insurance agent unit. The questionnaire will be sent randomly to licensed agents, rather than to specific people, and will require agents to attest they’re telling the truth.

Prior said he hopes the questionnaire will uncover opportunities to correct non-compliant behaviour and highlight best practices.

“The idea is that it has an educational component. It’s not about catching bad guys all the time,” Prior said. “It’s pointing out what people have done right [and] using it as a learning opportunity to improve overall business practices.”

Jonathan Got

Jonathan Got is a reporter with Advisor.ca and its sister publication, Investment Executive. Reach him at jonathan@newcom.ca.