Closing remarks at the International Chief Risk Officer (CRO) Roundtable for Peter Routledge, Superintendent

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Thank you for the kind introduction.

As we draw to the end of this in-person inaugural meeting, I want to thank you all for making this event a success.

I also want to thank my team here at OSFI for their work in organizing our first in-person International Chief Risk Officer Roundtable, and a special thank you to Angie Radiskovic for making this all happen.

The power of these roundtable sessions lies in information-sharing, benchmarking, and collaborative problem-solving.

Over the last two days, we showed how committed we all are to collaboration, and we’ve all learned a little more about each other’s challenges and circumstances. I have no doubt that our discussions will help us better understand the complexities we all try to navigate as prudential regulators.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a few messages from my perspective as Superintendent:

• The importance of the risk function driving strategy and governance at a financial institutions regulator – the outside in approach
  • In particular, our Risk, Strategy, and Governance initiative has helped us better define the risks that we’re willing to take to fulfill our mandate. It also allowed us to implement an effective 2nd line challenge function over our operations and business activities. We're pretty proud of that.
• The importance of sustaining and enhancing a will to act
  • New supervisory framework.
• My concerns about the weakening of the post-financial crisis consensus around bank regulation.

OSFI has done its part in keeping Canada’s financial system stable through some very turbulent times. But we can’t rely on our track record to be a guarantor of our success in today’s new and more volatile risk environment.

I’m sure we can all agree – this pace of change is not going to slow down. That’s why OSFI has been very proactive in adapting its internal risk management practices to our current reality.

Just like the financial institutions we regulate, regulators face risks in delivering on our mandates and maintaining public confidence in our financial systems.

Be it reputational risk, climate change, cyber and information security concerns, culture and compliance, or executing new mandates – new and emerging risks pose their own set of challenges. Additionally, these need to be balanced with more ‘traditional” prudential regulatory risks such as housing, liquidity and credit.

Getting together to talk about the challenges we encounter and how to address them in forums like these is incredibly beneficial.

By leveraging our experiences and best practices through these roundtable sessions, we’re enhancing our risk management practices and becoming more resilient against the ever-evolving risk landscape at the same time.

The CRO roundtable sessions are meant to not only help us address the rapidly changing risk landscape, but also proactively anticipate emerging risks to better navigate them.

So, I want to thank you all for your valuable input today.

We hope that the insights shared, and discussions held during this event will be valuable takeaways for all of you – and that this inaugural in-person Roundtable event is the first of many.

Safe travels, and we look forward to continuing this collaborative journey in managing risks for the stability and resilience of our own organizations, and in turn, the soundness of our financial systems.

Thank you.