Contact: Kerrie Rushton, (202) 365-6338, [email protected]
June 29, 2022, Washington, DC -The Financial Data and Technology Association of North America today submitted comments in response to Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ (OSFI) public consultation on Draft Guideline B-10: Third Party Risk Management.
The comment letter focused on the interplay between this draft consultation and the concurrent development of Canada’s open banking framework, particularly the importance of clearly distinguishing third-party providers from open banking providers that will be accredited under the new OB system.
The letter also stressed that since it is OSFI’s mandate to keep FRFIs and, by extension, Canada’s financial system, safe, sound, and secure, it is critical to distinguish third-party providers who directly work with Federally Regulated Financial Institutions (FRFIs), from providers serving consumers whose only relationship with a FRFI is accessing data about that consumer to provide the customer with the benefit of their product or service. For example, an FRFI may have a relationship with the data aggregator who is performing the function of data portability on behalf of that customer, but it most likely does not have a relationship with that budgeting application, and therefore could not reasonably oversee or be responsible for its operations.
The letter also expressed appreciation for OSFI’s clarification provided by a footnote at the end of the consultation, which recognizes that this draft guideline is not intended to impede the establishment of open banking, but stressed that this footnote alone does not satisfactorily address the need to ensure coordination of accreditation for open banking providers. We therefore suggested to OSFI that the most appropriate amendment to address this critically important issue would be to make unambiguously clear that accredited open banking providers under Canada’s open banking system are exempt from OSFI’s third-party risk management framework.
We also urged OSFI to create a specific carveout from B-10 for all accredited open banking providers under Canada’s open banking framework as part of this consultation, and before the new open banking system is implemented.
A copy of the letter is available here: FDATA NA Submission to OSFI on Draft Guidance B.10
ABOUT FDATA NORTH AMERICA
FDATA North America was founded in early 2018. Its members collectively provide tens of millions of consumers in Canada, the United States and Mexico with aggregation-based tools to better manage their finances.
Members include air (Alliance for Innovative Regulation), APImetrics, Basis Theory, Betterment, BillGO, Codat, Direct ID, Envestnet Yodlee, EQ Bank, Experian, finansystech, Fiserv, Flinks, Hank Payments, Interac, Intuit, Inverite, Kabbage, Mogo, Morningstsar, M Science, MX, Petal, Plaid, Questrade, RocketMortgage, SaltEdge, Trustly, ValidiFI, Vaultree, VoPay, Wealthica, Xero, and others.