The Financial Services Commission of Ontario has published a draft Statement of Priorities for the coming year.

FSCO is required to publish its priorities by June 30 of each year. The statement identifies key challenges facing FSCO, outlines proposed strategic priorities, highlights initiatives and notes recent progress on significant projects. The draft is out for comments until May 29.

Among the issues it addresses are: FSCO’s plans for harmonizing point of sale disclosure for segregated funds and mutual funds; working with the Financial Services Ombudsnetwork to define performance standards for dispute-resolution services; examining the regulation of intermediaries and recommend ways to minimize possible conflicts, and promote equivalent consumer protection, focusing initially on intermediaries who sell mutual funds and seg funds.

It also plans to: undertake a review of the guidelines for Capital Accumulation Plans released by the Joint Forum in 2004; continue to monitor the achievement of principles for managing conflicts of interest in the insurance industry; assist regulators in the adoption of methods for collecting insurance company complaint data, with the goal of creating a national complaint reporting data system; develop recommendations for changes to the requirements for disclosure of plan information to pension plan beneficiaries to increase transparency.

Internally, it pledges to: implement recommendations resulting from an internal review of dispute-resolution processes; proceed with upgrades to compliance and enforcement tracking procedures; analyze opportunities for instituting electronic filing methods; and, continuing with the second phase of enhancements and upgrades to its website to advance FSCO’s provision of electronic services.