CAFII Holds Webinar with Marlena Labieniec, FSRA’s Director of Innovation, About the Authority’s Proposed Innovation Process
On November 29, 2021 CAFII held a webinar with Marlena Labieniec, FSRA’s Director of Innovation, about FSRA’s new innovation process and its Innovation Office. Prior to the discussion with Ms. Labieniec, introductory remarks were made by Glen Padassery, FSRA’s Executive Vice-President, Policy and Chief Consumer Officer, about FSRA’s vision for its role and approach in fostering innovation in Ontario’s financial services sector. Among the topics covered by Ms. Labieniec were:
- the Innovation Office as FSRA’s “Innovation Orchestrator”;
- facilitating both ‘inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ points of entry;
- FSRA’s five-step Innovation Process;
- the role of an Intake Form in standardizing starting point input to FSRA
- the importance of “Innovator Readiness”;
- FSRA’s five-step Risk Assessment Process in working with Innovators on proposed Innovations;
- the importance of strong, testable mitigation plans for any significant risks identified;
- the role of regulatory sandbox-like Test and Learn Environments (TLEs) in resolving uncertainty through experimentation and in ameliorating or clarifying identified risks sufficiently, for Innovations which initially generate a low or medium level of FSRA confidence;
- how TLEs will work;
- the TLE fee structure;
- the “go” or “no go” decision;
- some hypothetical Use Cases/examples; and
- FSRA’s balancing of incumbents and new market entrants in fostering innovation.
The session included good representation from regulators across the country, with the following regulators registered for the session:
- Quebec’s Autorite des marches financiers, or the AMF;
- the Ministry of Finance, Government of Quebec;
- the Alberta Auto Insurance Rate Board;
- the Government of Alberta;
- the Alberta Insurance Council;
- Alberta Treasury Board and Finance, Government of Alberta;
- several of Marlena’s colleagues from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario, or FSRA;
- the Financial and Consumers Services Commission of New Brunswick, or FCNB;
- the Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan;
- the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority, Government of Saskatchewan, or FCAA;
- the Insurance Council of British Columbia;
- the British Columbia Financial Services Authority, or BCFSA;
- the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, or FCAC; and
- the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, or OSFI.
The webinar included some live polls that demonstrated strong support for the efforts around innovation by FSRA.
