Angie Radiskovic, Assistant Superintendent and Chief Strategy and Risk Officer, delivers remarks for OSFI’s February Quarterly Release Announcement Day

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Thank you, Christina.

My name is Angie Radiskovic, OSFI’s Assistant Superintendent and Chief Strategy and Risk Officer. I am joined today by Amar Munipalle, Executive Director at OSFI’s Risk Advisory Hub.

Thank you for joining us today for our third Quarterly Release Announcement.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge that I am speaking to you from Toronto, on the traditional land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. This land is also home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. I am grateful to be present in this territory.  

This quarter we are launching a public consultation on draft revisions to the Capital Adequacy Requirements (CAR) Guideline.

Additionally, we are issuing:

• final Capital and Liquidity Treatment of Crypto-asset Exposures Guidelines for Banks and Insurance; and
• final Pillar 3 Disclosure Guidelines on Crypto-asset Exposures.

Finally, we are publishing a letter that outlines upcoming updates to Guideline B-15: Climate Risk Management.

I will now provide more details on these, beginning with the consultation.

Our public consultation on draft revisions to the Capital Adequacy Requirements (CAR) Guideline also seeks views on revisions to Small and Medium-sized Deposit-Taking Institutions Capital and Liquidity Requirements.

The proposed revisions to the CAR Guideline are built on the latest version of the guideline published in October 2023.

These revisions enhance the financial resilience and stability of deposit-taking institutions and will clarify existing capital rules and support their application with more consistency.

We are also updating how we define income-producing residential real estate exposures and clarifying the treatment of certain U.S. government-sponsored entities.

We are proposing changes under the market risk Standardized Approach, so it aligns more closely with the Basel Framework, and we are clarifying the credit valuation adjustment framework.

As announced by the Superintendent last week, the CAR Guideline also includes that we will defer increases to the Basel III standardized capital floor level (“output floor”) until further notice.

This means that the output floor will remain at 67.5% until further notice. Moreover, we commit to notifying affected banks at least two years prior to resuming an increase in the output floor.

On February 4, 2025, the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), unanimously reaffirmed their expectation to implement the Basel III capital framework in full and consistently. Like its GHOS peers, OSFI remains committed to Basel III principles because we believe our commitment will enhance the resilience of the Canadian banking system.

At present, however, there remains uncertainty about when other jurisdictions will fully implement Basel III. Although OSFI has nearly fulfilled its commitment to implement all aspects of the Basel III framework, we will not extend the implementation lead we share with a small number of fellow jurisdictions.

Turning to our final guidelines on crypto-asset exposures.

To provide guidance on the prudential treatment of these assets, OSFI is releasing its final guidelines on Capital and Liquidity Treatment of crypto-asset exposures for banks and insurers.

Last August, OSFI published its draft guideline on Pillar 3 disclosure expectations, along with a consultation to stakeholders seeking their feedback. It incorporated the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS) final standards on the disclosure of crypto-asset exposures.

Today, following that consultation, we are clarifying our expectations on public disclosures of financial institutions’ exposures to crypto-assets by publishing our final guidelines on the matter for domestic systemically important banks, as well as for small and medium-sized deposit taking institutions.

The final guidelines come into effect for the fiscal Q1 2026 reporting period and will replace the interim advisory on the regulatory treatment of crypto-asset exposures issued in August 2022.

Moving on to the letter we are publishing on updates to our Guideline B-15 on Climate Risk Management and on a future consultation.

OSFI has always been clear that when we started implementing Guideline B-15 based on the international standard, we expected to update it to align with the standards from the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB).

The CSSB published their final standards in December, and we will be aligning our climate-related financial disclosure expectations to ensure interoperability with them. We will publish guideline B-15 in late March.

We will also consult on disclosing greenhouse gas emissions from off-balance sheet assets under management later this year.

We continue to receive climate-related data from financial institutions, and we expect them to continue to make progress in understanding, measuring, and managing their climate-related risks. In fact, many of them are getting ready early, which gives them a competitive advantage.

Lastly, I’d like to provide an update on plans for our public consultation on regulatory compliance management. Last fall’s semi-annual update to our Annual Risk Outlook had it scheduled as part of today’s Quarterly Release.

We have decided to pause this consultation for the moment and to focus on our supervisory work in this area. We will determine our next steps in the coming months.  

Before we turn to questions, I would like to note that this is the last pilot of the Quarterly Release and in two weeks’ time, Industry Day. Last summer, OSFI announced we would test this approach and evaluate it. 

We have taken the feedback we have received seriously and are determining next steps and considering adjustments to its processes, format and cadence for the way forward. The Annual Risk Outlook, which will be published in April, will have further details.

Thank you, I am ready to answer your questions.