The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) is the primary regulator of federally regulated financial institutions and federally administered pension plans. To help assess how well it is achieving its mandate, OSFI undertakes consultations with senior executives within the financial community for their perceptions of OSFI's performance.
A key element of OSFI's stakeholder consultations program is a biennial survey of CEOs of all federally regulated financial institutions, including banks and other deposit-taking institutions, and life and property and casualty insurance companies.
The research objective of the 2016-17 Financial Institutions Survey (FIS) is to provide a high level assessment of OSFI's overall performance on a series of core measures, including:
Where relevant, the 2016-17 results are compared to the three previous research waves to understand how perceptions of OSFI's performance have changed over time.
The results are based on an online survey conducted with senior executives of federally regulated financial institutions, between September 26 and October 26, 2016.
A list of eligible financial institutions (225) was provided by OSFI to Environics, all of whom were invited to participate in this research. These institutions comprise all active deposit-taking institutions and insurance companies supervised by OSFI, meaning that the survey represents an attempted census of these financial institutions. As with previous iterations of this survey, financial institutions in windup were not included as the questions would not be relevant. The data presented in this report are unweighted.
Almost all responses to the survey (119) were completed by small and medium-sized institutions. For the purposes of this study, small and medium-sized institutions are defined as all financial institutions excluding Canada's six largest banks and three largest life insurance companies. All nine large financial institutions completed the survey, bringing the total sample to 128 respondents. The response rate for the survey is 57%. This is calculated as the number of responding participants (128), divided by the total eligible sample (225). This is an excellent response rate for a survey with busy senior executives, and is higher than achieved in the previous FIS survey (e.g., the response rate for the 2014-15 online survey was 43%).
Since the approach was an attempted census (i.e., entire population of active financial institutions regulated by OSFI was invited to participate in this study), there is no margin of sampling error to be estimated or reported. The good response rate and the similarity of responding institutions to the entire population on key characteristics (industry sector, asset size) indicates that the results are likely to be representative of financial institutions regulated by OSFI.
Overall, the findings in the 2016-17 survey show positive momentum on OSFI’s performance in a number of areas across guidance, approvals and supervision. Indeed, the survey this year shows that all key metrics were consistent or increased from 2014-15.
Overall, respondents are satisfied with OSFI as the prudential regulator and supervisor of Canada’s financial services industry, and the findings this year are more positive than previous iterations of the survey. Specifically, over nine in ten (93%) are very or somewhat satisfied with OSFI. The level of satisfaction has increased overall and in particular among the number of insurance companies providing positive ratings.
There is also widespread agreement among respondents that OSFI focuses on the appropriate areas of risk in their sector. In anticipating future areas of priority, the threat of cyber risk continues to be a priority that stakeholders would like to see OSFI focus on.
There is continuing positive momentum on performance ratings for consulting with the industry when developing guidance. The findings indicate modest opinions on the scaling of guidance to reflect the nature of smaller organizations. Having said that, there has been a decline in the number of respondents providing negative ratings.
Respondents also provide high scores for OSFI’s performance in the approvals process and there has been an increase in the number who say they are very satisfied with this area from the last survey. There has also been an increase in perceived understanding of the approvals process in that more respondents believe they understand very well the basis on which decisions are made in comparison to the previous wave of the survey.
When considering supervision, there is a majority view that OSFI is doing a good job in providing opportunities to discuss issues of concern before coming to a conclusion, as well as with regard to the clarity of their written correspondence. The findings also highlight an increase in performance on consistency of written and oral communications.
The findings among small and medium-sized institutions largely echo those outlined above in that the metrics remain either consistent with the findings from 2014-15 or have increased
The total expenditure for the POR project is $40,068.95 (including HST).
I hereby certify as a Senior Officer of Environics Research Group that the deliverables fully comply with the Government of Canada political neutrality requirements outlined in the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada and Procedures for Planning and Contracting Public Opinion Research. Specifically, the deliverables do not contain any reference to electoral voting intentions, political party preferences, standings with the electorate, or ratings of the performance of a political party or its leader.
Megan Tam
Vice President, Public Affairs
Environics Research Group
megan.tam@environics.ca
613.699.8905