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The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), which supervises banks and large insurance companies in Canada, has released guidelines for financial institutions to address climate change after an extensive consultation process. This is timely, considering banks and insurers are massive funders of the fossil fuel industry.
The release of the guidelines, called the B-15, comes more than a year after a January 2022 pilot study by Canada’s central bank and OSFI on how resilient financial institutions would be under new climate policies.
The study found that the creditworthiness of oilsands producers is expected to fall over the next few decades. B-15 appears to address this concern by accommodating the needs of all stakeholders, including oilsands producers.
The development of B-15 is the result of one of the most ambitious consultations in OSFI history. It received nearly 4,400 submissions from financial institutions, non-regulated entities and other organizations and over 4,300 individuals.
But do the guidelines succeed in addressing the concerns of all stakeholders? And what, if anything, is missing?
Over the past 40 years, I have been involved in the formulation of financial sector policy, worked in a provincial financial institution and been a student of financial institution policy development. I have an appreciation for the role financial institutions play in modern economies and the importance of up-to-date policy frameworks and vigilant supervision.
2023-03-29 17:00:04
Post from phys.org