Canadian financial educator CSI Global Education Inc. recently expanded its offerings to players in the Chinese securities industry with an education program for Chinese compliance executives.

The recent program, called Canadian Compliance Standards, is the latest endeavour to come from CSI’s partnership with the Securities Association of China. CSI has been developing education and training standards for China’s securities industry for the past seven years.

“CSI delivers an unprecedented amount of training across all ranks of China’s security industry,” said Roberta Wilton, president and CEO of CSI.

The latest program involved an intensive four-week program, hosted in Toronto, attended by senior compliance executives from China’s largest securities and brokerage firms.

“Through this joint CSI-SAC Chief Compliance Officers Program, compliance officers from 25 major Chinese securities firms have gained a deep understanding of the components, focus, and procedures of compliance policies and implementation in Canadian financial institutions,” said Zhu Limin, Delegation Leader and chief compliance officer for China Securities Corporation.

The training program culminated in a half-day symposium that brought Canadian and Chinese compliance leaders together to discuss evolving compliance issues faced by both countries. Canadian participants included Julie Eisenstat, managing director and head of capital markets compliance Canada at RBC Capital Markets, John R. Morton, managing director and head of retail compliance at Scotia Capital and Kim Buntain, director of global compliance for BMO Capital Markets, as well as representatives from the Ontario Securities Commission.

The program was offered as compliance and risk management develop into key priorities for regulators. Greater pressure is being placed on the world’s financial systems to improve compliance procedures and enforcement, via industry self-regulation and government bodies, according to CSI.

“Compliance policies are instrumental to the healthy and sustainable development of China’s securities firms,” said vice-chairman Yang Xiaowu of the SAC. “Canada has several decades of experience in compliance, and through this program our firms can learn those practices.”

The program comes a few months after CSI and SAC co-hosted a national symposium, entitled Moving Forward: Emerging Best Practices from the Global Financial Crisis, in Hainan, China. More than 140 financial professionals representing more than 70 Chinese securities firms attended. The symposium provided a forum for Canadian and Chinese securities executives to exchange lessons learned from the market crisis.

IE