The Canadian financial services industry has an important opportunity to act magnanimously toward a handful of disgruntled clients — and it certainly should, if only for selfish reasons.

Regulators are finally shuffling into the unseemly spat between some of the industry’s most prominent firms and its client dispute resolution service, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments.

The industry has been digging in its heels against a handful of recent OBSI decisions, and whining to the regulators that it is getting unfair treatment at the hands of the ombudsman. An independent review has found the criticism to be rubbish.

Now, regulators are encouraging the two sides to start playing nice and resolve the outstanding cases. Presumably, regulators will also push for some more fundamental reforms at OBSI.

In the short term, however, the industry should seek to resolve these lingering cases as quickly as possible. For starters, it’s the right thing to do. The independent review has found that OBSI is doing a world-class job. The fact that the industry doesn’t like some of its decisions is too bad. It should learn to lose gracefully.

The effort to undermine the one cost-effective option that aggrieved consumers have in disputes in which they often are dreadfully overmatched, in terms of legal and financial resources, is terrible optics for the industry. This stand is particularly ruinous when, at the same time, some of the same firms that are complaining about OBSI are seeking to take control of a critical piece of the Canadian trading and clearing businesses.

To win regulatory approval for those deals, some of the firms that are busy subverting OBSI also pledge to run the trading and clearing businesses for the benefit of all participants in the capital markets. These industry players promise the regulators that they will resolve conflicts between their regulatory responsibilities and commercial interests fairly; and that the market monolith they hope to create will benefit the public interest.

Regulators would be wise to be skeptical. The industry should settle those old disputes with clients, and stop undercutting OBSI.