Pan-Canadian regulator says expanded rules allow for enhanced market monitoring and better investor protection
The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) has announced that its amended rules regarding the use of client identifiers are now in effect.
The amendments, which took effect on July 26, expand on existing requirements for dealer members to ensure that client identifiers and/or designations are included with each order of Canadian corporate and government debt securities they send. The implementation of the new requirements comes after two public comment periods.
Under the changes to the Universal Market Integrity Rules and Dealer Member Rules, client identifiers must also be included with orders sent to equity marketplaces in the form of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI) for clients treated as institutional accounts, or account numbers for most retail clients.
“The expansion of mandatory client identifiers to Canada's equity as well as debt markets now provides for a far more comprehensive and timely view of market activity, enhancing our capability to perform both market monitoring and investigations,” said IIROC President and CEO Andrew Kriegler in a statement. “We can better protect investors and support healthy capital markets.”
In its statement, IIROC stressed that adding client identifiers to trading data will enhance its efficiency in a range of regulatory functions, and better support the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) in carrying out their public interest mandate.
“IIROC is committed to continuing to enhance its mandate of market integrity and investor protection,” said Senior Vice-President of Market Regulation Victoria Pinnington. “With the implementation of our new state-of-the art surveillance system in 2019 and mandatory client identifiers we are well-positioned to meet the continuously evolving trading and investing environment.”
