IAP annual report highlights conflicted compensation

The Investor Advisory Panel (IAP) has released its 2016 annual report summarizing its recommendations, activities, submissions, consultations and meetings during the calendar year.

In 2016, the panel focused on five critical areas of investor protection:

conflicts of interest and conflicted compensation,
the need for a best interest standard,
risk profiling,
the Ombudsman for Banking and Investment Services (OBSI) and
the new Capital Markets Regulatory Authority — specifically the future of the IAP within the new national securities regulatory framework.

During the year, the panel focused directly on investor protection in Ontario, producing 12 submissions and comment letters that bring the investor perspective to rule and policymaking.

The panel also built on independent research it commissioned from PlanPlus Inc. to host a risk profiling roundtable that fostered further dialogue among investors, industry and regulators.

Further, the panel called on regulators to eliminate conflicted compensation practices like embedded commissions, which remain a high priority for the panel in the year ahead.

Read: CSA’s embedded commissions paper focuses on unique Canadian market

“Our view on conflicts of interest and conflicted compensation has never wavered,” says the report. “There is simply no place for them in a healthy securities regulatory landscape.”

Read: OSC to define BIS, embedded commissions rules: draft priorities

In addition to focusing on embedded commissions, the report says the panel will “closely monitor compliance and enforcement actions flowing from the December 2016 CSA, IIROC and MFDA review findings of conflicted compensation practices at regulated firms.”

Read the full IAP annual report, with the panel’s next steps and comment letters, here.

Also read: ‘Disclosure is not a panacea,’ says IIROC head