FSRA would like to extend our warmest thanks to everyone who provided feedback on our Innovation Framework public consultation. We have enjoyed our conversations with our stakeholders. While the consultation is now closed, our Innovation Office welcomes continued dialogue on the Innovation Framework and will remain engaged with stakeholders as the Innovation Framework is implemented and tested in real-world conditions.

We appreciate the overwhelmingly positive response we have received from stakeholders on the Innovation Framework, the Test and Learn Environments (TLEs), and the proposed role of the Innovation Office.

Our stakeholders have signalled an emerging consensus around the importance of digital innovation in Ontario’s financial services sectors, with most expressing excitement around the Innovation Framework as a significant step in the right direction of promoting innovation and a reduced regulatory burden for new market participants while protecting the rights and interests of consumers.

FSRA’s new TLEs were similarly praised as an encouraging use of FSRA’s exemptive authority and a potentially useful tool for encouraging the development of innovative new products, services, and business models.

As the proposed orchestrator of FSRA’s innovation ambition, the Innovation Office was received warmly by stakeholders for providing a centralized, standardized, pro-innovation point of entry for stakeholders looking to bring their innovative ideas to FSRA. While innovators may still choose to bring these ideas to FSRA through their existing points of contact, the Innovation Office will provide a dedicated hub for addressing innovative ideas quickly and comprehensively.

While our feedback from stakeholders was enthusiastic and generally positive, it also included a considerable amount of thoughtful, useful reflections and commentary. In the following ‘What We Heard’ section, we will outline some common thematic considerations that arose from the submissions we received over the course of the consultation.

What we heard

Next steps

With strong stakeholder buy-in and a wealth of new perspective to draw from, FSRA’s next steps will focus on incorporating input from these public consultations and moving the Innovation Framework from theory to practice.

Several stakeholders noted the merits of the Innovation Framework cannot be fully understood until it is applied and we can see how it operates in real-world conditions. We agree: the Innovation Framework is meant to be a live document that FSRA will continue to evolve and refine as we gather data and learn practical lessons about how to best support financial services innovation in Ontario.

This commitment to constant evolution and learning will prompt us to iterate on our operating model, tools, processes, and methods as we ensure that our decision-making remains grounded in our innovation ambition and guiding principles. This practical iterative approach will allow us to balance our capacity to support existing innovation commitments with our ability to adapt to new innovation challenges and opportunities.