The Ontario Securities Commission has approved a proposed policy of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada regarding minimum standards for institutional account opening, operation and supervision.

The IDA currently has a policy to provide minimum standards for retail account supervision; however, there have been no specific standards in place for institutional accounts. It therefore developed the new policy to provide minimum standards for IDA members to open institutional accounts, conduct suitability reviews for these accounts and supervise these accounts.

Adherence to the minimum standards requires that a dealer have in place procedures to properly open and operate institutional accounts and monitor their activity.

The proposed policy was published for comment on February 11, 2005. It says that immaterial changes have been made to the proposed policy as a result of comments from the recognizing jurisdictions and the public.

The IDA added certain requirements that are currently in the retail account policy that apply to all customer accounts. Also, in order to avoid duplication, the IDA amended the proposed policy to remove references to certain account activities that are explicitly prohibited or controlled by the Universal Market Integrity Rules, and the obligation on firms to have supervisory procedures to detect them are also required under UMIR.