The AMF implemented its business continuity plans and transitioned the vast majority of its employees to remote work. The transition went smoothly, with the AMF remaining fully operational.

The AMF carried out several actions and information campaigns aimed at protecting consumers in times of crisis, including a television and web-based awareness campaign and fraud prevention webinars. The AMF also increased its financial support to front-line organizations dedicated to helping consumers.

The AMF set up an intersectoral COVID-19 monitoring group tasked with anticipating and analyzing the actual and potential impacts of the crisis on the financial system. Major efforts are also being made to enhance monitoring of the risks that many entities regulated by the AMF are exposed to and to effectively respond to situations that could compromise their financial stability. The AMF has also stepped up its market surveillance activities to ensure market integrity during times of turbulence.

The AMF is participating actively and on an even more sustained basis in discussions in national and international regulatory forums in order to share findings from the crisis and develop coordinated responses to mitigate the effects of the crisis and stabilize the markets.

Several measures have resulted from this, including:

• The AMF has ensured that market structures, such as exchanges, alternative trading systems, clearing agencies and trade repositories, have developed strategies to deal with the pandemic.
• Regulatory filing deadlines have been extended for market participants.
• Multiple measures have been introduced for financial sector participants (insurance and financial planning firms and representatives, money-services businesses, insurers, deposit institutions and trust companies), including temporary adjustments to capital adequacy and liquidity guidelines, fee payment deferrals, and an extension of the validity period for expired certificates.

In addition to the actions taken in coordination with other regulators, the AMF has taken many steps to mitigate the crisis’ impact on entities regulated by the AMF and allow them to focus on the continuity of their business and limit as much as possible the impact of the pandemic on the clienteles they serve.

Several measures have resulted from this, including:

• The AMF has ensured that market structures, such as exchanges, alternative trading systems, clearing agencies and trade repositories, have developed strategies to deal with the pandemic.
• Continuous disclosure filing deadlines have been extended for reporting issuers.
• Multiple measures have been introduced for financial sector participants (insurance and financial planning firms and representatives, money-services businesses, insurers, deposit institutions and trust companies), including temporary adjustments to capital adequacy and liquidity guidelines, fee payment deferrals, and an extension of the validity period for expired certificates.
• Temporary exceptional measures have been put in place, including actions to mitigate the impact of the suspension of exams on career entry, extending certificate renewal and maintenance of registration deadlines, and deferring the payment of fees for service requests from certified representatives and registered firms and independent representatives.

The AMF will continue to invest significantly in protecting financial consumers made more vulnerable by the crisis to potential fraud, illegal practice and misrepresentations. The AMF will ensure that it responds effectively to new consumer issues and needs that may have become exacerbated during the crisis, including by:

• acquiring a deeper knowledge of Quebeckers’ financial habits in order to tailor the tools it offers to current issues and make them available on modern distribution platforms based on the various clienteles.
• continuing to optimally leverage its partnerships in financial education and consumer protection and rely on its Financial Products and Services Consumers Advisory Committee.
• making the development of a robust framework to better protect vulnerable individuals a priority and ensuring that the industry handles complaints efficiently.
• simplifying access to its assistance services by consumers who are dissatisfied with the way their file has been handled.
• pursuing its work on the incentive management practices of financial institutions, the framework for segregated funds and the banning of trailing commissions paid by mutual funds.

The AMF will continue to give priority to its monitoring and oversight activities so it can closely track the evolving economic and financial crisis caused by the pandemic and respond agilely and effectively to emerging issues. It will make significant efforts to monitor the actual and potential impacts of the crisis on Québec’s financial sector. It will also continue to work jointly with industry members to identify solutions and actions to mitigate the most significant risks, particularly in terms of operational incident management and business continuity.

The AMF will continue to work with multiple national and international regulators to deliver a coordinated response as the crisis evolves. It will seek to maintain its leadership and a high level of collaboration and cooperation within these forums in order to promote and implement measures that will strengthen financial system resilience.

Specifically, it will increase its efforts to optimize the compliance burden of the entities it regulates by actively contributing to the work being carried out in this respect within the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the Credit Union Prudential Supervisors Association (CUPSA). It will also leverage its new affiliation with the Mortgage Broker Regulators’ Council of Canada (MBRCC) resulting from the transfer of mortgage brokerage supervision to the AMF on May 1, 2020.

With technology and data science needs becoming more pressing, the AMF will rachet up efforts and deploy more resources to accelerate its data valorization strategy. These efforts will enable the AMF to improve its performance by enhancing its operational and decision-making processes and will ultimately result in improved monitoring, surveillance and consumer assistance services.

In responding to this crisis, the AMF has demonstrated its agility and its ability to adapt to the new environment created by the pandemic. In terms of human resources, the AMF will focus, first and foremost, on ensuring the health, safety and engagement of its employees. The AMF will also continue to develop its operational and management approaches. In particular, it will accelerate the implementation of new means of interacting remotely both internally and externally.