Our Projects
Recommendations
Our team had the opportunity to share our insights and recommendations based on our research on IIROC and the IDA with the Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce set up by the Ontario government to revamp the capital markets of the province.
Demographics of victims of financial crime in canada
The study of IIROC case victims evaluates the effects of demographic characteristics on the likelihood of vulnerability to different types of financial crime. It is to rank the demographic factors contributing to financial victimization and showcasing the different demographic profiles between financial exploitation and non-financial-exploitation victims. The study employed the descriptive analysis to showcase the demographic characteristics of investors who have been victims of financial crimes in Canada.
235 cases disclosing the details of financial crime victims were collected from the IIROC enforcement platform between January 2009 and December 2019. 4575 investors were recognized as victims of different types of financial crime.
The IIROC study reveals that investors with specific demographic characteristics are more vulnerable to investment fraud than others.
analyzing the enforcement performance of the iiroc and the ida
The purpose of this report is to analyse the enforcement practices of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and contrast them with that of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada to examine the regulatory environment in Canada after the merger of Market Regulation Services and the IDA. The data for this retrospective longitudinal study was collected from 409 IIROC tribunal cases from June 2008 to December 2019 involving individual offenders and was compared with a similar study conducted on IDA by Mark Lokanan in 2017. The findings show no statistically significant difference in the fines imposed by the two regulatory bodies, but the costs of the proceedings have gone down. IIROC has refrained from issuing penalties of benign penalties like retaking examinations/courses and mandating terms and conditions on the offenders, whereas the relatively stringent suspension penalty saw a considerable rise under IIROC. However, no effect on the number or on the distribution of the type of offences committed in the industry was observed. Based on the findings, economic theories of regulation and the observations of experts on the industry, this report questions the appropriateness of the current self-regulatory framework in the securities market. Although the study is limited by the fact that a considerable number of cases of financial crime go unreported in the marketplace, it provides a detailed picture of the current regulatory environment in the Canadian financial industry.
Investigating Aggravating & Mitigating Factors Considered by IIROC
The project is aimed to analyze the role of aggravating and mitigating factors in penalty imposition by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and present it as a tool to support the capital markets modernization task force, which recommends the merger of IIROC and Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA). It employs data collected from 386 individual offender sanction hearings between 2008 and 2019 from IIROC website. The significant findings of the research is that IIROC has missed a balance between aggravating and mitigating factors. This study also reveals that the existing guidelines for deciding the level of sanctions and penalties on offenders would not be effective in controlling future offence as it favors mitigating factors, which resulted in lax penalties. This research helps IIROC to realize the need for revisiting its sanction hearing process and guidelines to establish a better enforcement standard.