Mark Zelmer, among the top officials at Canada’s main banking regulator, is stepping down this summer.
As deputy superintendent of the regulation sector in the office from the Superintendent of monetary Institutions, Zelmer accounts for capital and accounting issues, and regulatory compliance and approvals – including making recommendations on important transactions involving banking institutions.
Zelmer is also the Canadian bank regulator’s representative on international standard-setting committees including the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, along with a member of OSFI’s executive committee with superintendent Jeremy Rudin.
During his tenure at OSFI, Zelmer, a former senior Bank of Canada official, warned Canada’s big banks to not get complacent about healthy capital levels and the country’s buoyant housing markets which have so far avoided showing the cracks that plagued other markets, including in the usa.
During an address at the C.D. Howe Institute in 2014, he colourfully urged bankers to resist “the siren song of market share” that may lead them to ease up on mortgage underwriting practices.
OSFI has begun the recruiting tactic to replace Zelmer, who, before joining OSFI this year, rose through the ranks in the Bank of Canada over more than two decades to become chief of the Financial Stability Department.
The job OSFI needs to fill is assistant superintendent, the job Zelmer was hired to complete prior to being promoted to deputy superintendent in 2013.
A recruitment notice was circulated Friday.
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“Recruitment takes devote anticipation of Mark Zelmer’s planned retirement from OSFI later this season,” OSFI spokesperson Annik Faucher said within an email.
Faucher added that the regulator’s policy would be to recruit both inwardly and outwardly.
The recruitment notice says the duties for Zelmer’s replacement includes making recommendations “about the approval of important transactions involving banking institutions (e.g., acquisitions of one institution by another.)”
The assistant superintendent will also oversee the “development of precedents and interpretations” of legislation administered by OSFI, like the Bank Act, and the supervision of federally regulated pension plans.
The closing date for the job is listed as Feb. 10, 2016.
Peter Routledge, an economic services analyst at National Bank Financial, said he didn’t have concerns about Zelmer’s departure provided there is a succession plan in position.
“I would expect any transition to become orderly,” Routledge said.
Another Toront0-based analyst said the departure rarely is in an issue for OSFI since Zelmer hasn’t been there too long. However, he noted the organization has undergone “some turnover” in the last few years, prompted by departures and reorganization.
Deputy superintendent Andrew J. Kriegler, previously a dark-horse contender for the top job, left OSFI within the fall of 2014, soon after Rudin became superintendent. Former banker Jamey Hubbs joined the regulator in April as assistant superintendent of the deposit-taking supervision.
OSFI was established was the late 1980s as an independent agency from the authorities. Its mandate is “to protect depositors, policyholders, financial institution creditors and pension plan members, while allowing banking institutions to compete and take reasonable risks.”
Financial Post
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