The principals of SBG have experience in every aspect of the regulation of dealers and the enforcement of business conduct and trading rules. We have been involved in the development and drafting of many of the rules and policies and have been guest speakers at many industry panels on the rules and issues.
We are the ones to call when you need to know what the rules are, how they are interpreted, how they apply to your business and what the regulators will expect to see when they come to review your business practices.
Change, Change, Change
New rules and rule changes keep coming thick and fast – from the Provincial regulators, from the SROs, from the Federal government and even from off-shore (think of the US Internal Revenue Service’s QI Requirements and the Financial Action Task Force guidelines that drive changes in Canada’s anti-money laundering rules).
Understanding the changes and development new policies and procedures to meet them isn’t easy amid the daily demands of doing business and complying with today’s rules. We can help you keep up catch up and stay ahead.
Principles based regulation
Canadian securities legislation has always had a combination of prescriptive regulation and principles based regulation. As the business models and products in securities industry change rapidly, there has been a move to more principles based regulation. The use of principles provides firms with the flexibility to meet regulatory standards in a manner that is most appropriate for the firm based on its size and complexity. The trade off for this flexibility is a lack of certainty.
In general, regulators can tell you when you are in violation of a principle but they can’t assure you what will satisfy the principle. What is appropriate is unique to each firm.
We can help you design a compliance and supervision system that it is appropriate for your firm.
Diagnostics
Written policies and procedures are only part of the outcome sought by regulators. They are also looking at execution of the systems documented. The regulators conduct compliance field reviews of registrants to ensure their policies and procedures are both well documented but also executed in an effective manner.
We can conduct a review of your operations to ensure that the requirements of securities legislation are being met.