FSRA Announces New Members of Board of Directors
TORONTO – Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario Chair Bryan Davies is pleased to announce the appointment of Joanne De Laurentiis and Brent Zorgdrager to the FSRA board of directors to serve two-year terms.
A seasoned financial services executive, Joanne De Laurentiis has extensive governance experience that includes leading multi-stakeholder organizations that represent and advocate on behalf of industry sectors. President and CEO of The Investment Funds Institute of Canada from 2006 until her retirement in July, 2016, Ms. De Laurentiis has also served as President and CEO of Credit Union Central of Canada; Mondex Canada; and the Interac Association.
Ms. De Laurentiis currently serves as Chair of the PIMCO Independent Review Committee; sits on the board of directors for Dealnet Financial, BeWhere Holdings, the Toronto Transit Commission and the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education; and is a Senior Fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute. She has previously sat on many boards, including the Toronto Financial Services Alliance Board; the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission Board; the Canadian Payments Association Board; and the Equifax Advisory Council. She has an MA in Political Science and is fluent in Italian.
Joining the Kindred Credit Union as Chief Financial Officer in 2007, Brent Zorgdrager jointly served as CFO of Meritas Financial Inc., then co-owned by Kindred, playing an influential role in the 2010 merger of Meritas into Qtrade Financial Group. As Kindred's Chief Executive Officer from 2010 until January 2019, Mr. Zorgdrager oversaw the rebranding of the Kitchener-based co-operative, previously known as the Mennonite Savings and Credit Union.
Under his leadership, Kindred Credit Union grew to become the tenth largest credit union in Ontario with assets of more than $1 billion and membership of more than 22,000. He also established the credit union’s reputation for social responsibility as an early adopter of SRI products, including Ethical Funds, the Meritas SRI family of Mutual Funds and OikoCredit Global Impact GICs, leading to Kindred’s certification as a B Corporation™. In 2018, he received the Gary Gillam Award for Corporate Social Responsibility. Previously, Mr. Zorgdrager spent 17 years at Manulife Financial in senior finance roles, including as CFO of the Group Savings & Retirement Solutions business unit.
Mr. Zorgdrager holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, as well as the Chartered Accountants and the Chartered Professional Accountants designations. He currently serves on the board of the Responsible Investment Association and is the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Ten Thousand Villages Canada, a social enterprise that pays artisans a fair trade price and which enables these artisans to distribute their products throughout Canada.
“We welcome the depth and breadth of financial services experience and leadership that these individuals bring to the governance of FSRA,” said Chair Davies. “FSRA board members share Ms. De Laurentiis’s commitment to developing consumer financial literacy and will benefit from Mr. Zorgdrager’s experience within the credit union sector.”
Biographical information on all Board Members is available at www.fsrao.ca/about-fsra/governance.
About FSRA
Effective June 8, 2019, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) has assumed the regulatory duties of the Financial Services Commission of Ontario and the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Ontario. Learn more about FSRA and our approach to achieving safety, fairness and choice in non-securities financial services at www.fsrao.ca.
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