The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada will now be able to share information to help them combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The two bodies have signed a memorandum of understanding that will allow them to exchange the information. FINTRAC will provide a broad range of information to OSFI that will help facilitate its risk assessment of financial institutions. OSFI will provide FINTRAC with the results of its assessments of financial institutions’ compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing measures.

Assessing compliance systems is already a key part of OSFI’s mandate and supervisory framework, OSFI notes.

In addition to helping the two organizations to work together to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, the MOU will also minimize potential overlap of work and reduce the impact of administrative requirements on federally regulated financial institutions.

The authority for the agreement is the Public Safety Act 2002, which includes amendments to provide for information exchange relating to the compliance by federally regulated financial institutions with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. These amendments came into effect June 1. Until passage of the Public Safety Act, OSFI and FINTRAC were prohibited from exchanging this information.