The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions published its third Quarterly Release of 2026 on September 10, advancing policy work across capital, disclosure, concentration risk, crypto-asset exposures, interest rate risk and insurance reporting.
Most of the updates are final versions of guidance OSFI had previously circulated in draft form, the agency said.
"Resilience is what gives financial institutions the capacity to lend, invest, and support Canadians throughout the business cycle," said Peter Routledge, Superintendent of Financial Institutions. "In our Quarterly Releases, OSFI announces clear, targeted adjustments to keep our expectations current, proportionate, and suited to the risks institutions face."
Two items in this release are directly relevant to Canada's insurance sector. First, OSFI finalized updated insurance regulatory returns to reflect IFRS 18, the new international financial reporting standard that restructures the statement of profit or loss into three categories: operating, investing and financing.
As Insurance Business reported when OSFI first previewed these templates in April, the goal is a single standardized return template applicable across insurance sectors, since IFRS 18 applies to annual reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2027.
Insurers with December fiscal year ends will need to file under the new format starting January 1, 2027, while those with October fiscal year ends have until November 1, 2027. OSFI has said its own supervisory analysis won't materially change as a result of the presentation shift, since the underlying financial substance being reported remains the same.
Separately, OSFI finalized its 2027 Mortgage Insurer Capital Adequacy Test guideline, introducing new tailored capital treatment for certain multi-unit residential construction exposures to better reflect their underlying risk. That's a targeted change affecting Canada's small group of federally regulated mortgage insurers, whose capital requirements for construction-related lending risk have historically been treated less granularly than other property exposures.
OSFI's first quarterly release of 2026 had already updated the Minimum Capital Test guideline for P&C insurers, effective January 1, 2026, with simplified calculations for unexpired coverage and clarified capital requirements for foreign branches.
Insurers should also be aware that OSFI signalled last year it was deferring revisions to the Life Insurance Capital Adequacy Test guideline beyond 2028, meaning life insurers won't see comparable capital methodology changes to LICAT on the same near-term timeline as this release's mortgage insurer and reporting updates.
The bulk of today's release concerns bank-specific requirements rather than insurers directly -- a finalized Capital Adequacy Requirements Guideline with a streamlined approval process for small and medium-sized banks adopting internal ratings-based credit risk models, a draft Total Loss Absorbing Capacity Guideline clarifying legal opinion requirements to support orderly bank resolution, finalized crypto-asset capital and liquidity treatment reflecting industry feedback, and an updated Guideline B-12 on interest rate risk management.
OSFI also issued a statement clarifying its technology-neutral stance on tokenized and other digitally represented deposits, focusing regulatory treatment on the nature of a product rather than how it's built or delivered.
