For the second quarter of its 2021-22 fiscal year, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) met or exceeded service targets for more than three-quarters of its standards, according to its latest scorecard.
That compared with 86% in the first quarter. The standards cover FSRA’s performance in 22 key regulatory areas in the auto, credit union, pensions, market conduct and public affairs spaces.
Similar to Q1, the regulator cited the impact of the pandemic on its operations. There were “sharp increases” in the number of applications that came in, creating “challenges for FSRA to deliver against the standards.”
In the market conduct space, this was once again apparent when it came to areas such as individual mortgage broker licensing. Licences should be issued within 10 days for complete submissions, but this timeline was only met 25% of the time, compared with the 80% target. Applicants who had suitability issues identified were notified within 10 days 64% of the time, compared with the 80% target.
Those who submitted applications with missing information were notified of the issue promptly 100% of the time, exceeding the 80% target.
Similar results popped up for individual insurance agents. Only 9.3% of complete applications were processed on time while the service rate was 54.6% for those with suitability issues (both results also compare with 80% service targets).
For those agents with missing information, 100% of the errors were acknowledged promptly, exceeding the 80% target in that area.
In its report, the regulator noted the shortcomings and said it’s making changes.
“FSRA is expanding its resource capacity and evaluating current processing procedures to meet service standards by Q1 of FY 2022/23,” the report said.
One area of success for market conduct was FSRA’s ability to acknowledge complaints for all sectors it covers within three business days, exceeding its 90% target.
The regulator said it expects performance scores to improve in the subsequent quarters.