Thank you for inviting me to appear today to speak about the Auditor General's report.
I believe that copies of my remarks have been distributed by the clerk, so to respect the members' time, I will only cover the key points now, but trust they will become part of the public record.
In brief, I'd like to thank the Office of the Auditor General for their work. We are glad the report confirms that the large Canadian banks are well supervised. We are implementing the recommendations contained in the report. OSFI had identified similar issues to those identified in the Auditor General's report through our own auditing and risk management processes. We believe we have processes in place to effectively mitigate potential risks identified.
To give a bit of context, it may be helpful to give you a brief overview of OSFI and its mandate. OSFI is responsible for prudential oversight of about 450 financial institutions in Canada and approximately 1,400 private pension plans. Currently we have approximately 570 employees working in offices in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. OSFI is tasked with overseeing the solvency of federally regulated financial institutions in the interest of depositors, policy holders, and members of federal private pension plans.
The Auditor General's report mentioned that OSFI is fulfilling its mandate and that we should update our human resource planning to be better able to attract and attain qualified staff. We are addressing this recommendation by ensuring that our training programs and resource planning support business plan objectives and emerging risks, and by updating our compensation structure.
Training is very important to OSFI. Annual training plans are developed and prioritized as part of our annual HR planning and business plan process. The executive committee of OSFI monitors progress and provides direction on training priorities through quarterly updates. Individual divisions and units have access to training budgets for specialized training.
We also have plans to update our compensation structures to ensure that our salaries are competitive with those in the financial services industry, the market from which we source the majority of our talent. This would provide OSFI with greater ability to hire and retain the skills and experience that we need.
To respond to the Auditor General's recommendation on data collection from banks, OSFI, along with other members of the financial information committee and in partnership with the industry association, plans to use the annual housekeeping exercise to more thoroughly confirm the relevance and the continued usefulness of the data being collected.
As Mr. Wiersema suggested in his remarks, our action plan, once implemented, should adequately address the recommendation contained in the Auditor General's report. We believe that our plan will allow OSFI to remain a world-class regulator and supervisor so that we can continue to protect the interests of Canada's depositors, policy holders, and private pension plan members.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to any questions you may have about OSFI.