The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) has almost completed an effort to bolster industry education in connection with institutional business.
IIROC today published an update to its Institutional Proficiencies Project, which is now entering its final stages, outlining its multi-year initiative to review, and improve, institutional proficiency training.
The notice indicates that rather than develop new educational streams solely for institutional brokers and supervisors, IIROC has decided to add more material focusing on the institutional business to some of its core courses.
As a result, new institutional content was incorporated into courses for chief compliance officers and branch managers last spring, and to the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) in December 2014. Extra content to improve the training of advisors working with institutional clients is due to be added to the Conduct and Practices Handbook (CPH) course in March, it says.
The notice indicates that revisions to the CSC have increased the volume of the course by approximately 5%. Now, 73% of the course content is relevant to both retail and institutional business, 21% is most relevant to retail, and, just 6% is focused on the institutional side.
IIROC says that CSI is also developing continuing education courses for advisors working with institutional clients, and it says that it hopes that other continuing education providers will also develop more institutional content.
The regulator says that it is also considering aligning the proficiency requirements of retail and institutional supervisors. Any rule amendments to do this would be included in IIROC’s registration reform amendment proposals scheduled for later this year, it says. Among those amendments, it will remove the partners, directors and officers (PDO) course as a qualification for supervisors of institutional brokers.