Submitted by nsscadmin on
In March the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published proposed amendments to enhance protections of older adults and vulnerable clients. These new proposed amendments initially had a comment period of 90 days. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic this comment period has been extended to July 20. In this post and a following post next week we’ll highlight two aspects of the proposed amendments – trusted contact person and temporary holds.
Financial elder abuse is becoming more common as our population gets older. The CSA wants to put in place new regulations to enhance the protection of older adults and vulnerable people. This is the reason behind proposing a trusted contact person requirement.
Under this proposal, registrants would need to take reasonable steps to obtain the name and contact information of a trusted contact person and the client’s written consent to contact the trusted contact person in prescribed circumstances.
The trusted contact person proposal is intended to be a resource for registrants to aid in protecting clients from possible financial abuse and for concern about a client’s mental capacity. It’s possible due to the fact they don’t see their client as often as family and friends, that an adviser may notice decline that has eluded family and friends. By having a trusted contact person to contact, an adviser knows they have someone trustworthy to share this information with.
Next week in the second part of our look at proposed changes to securities regulations to enhance protections of older adults and vulnerable clients, we will cover the proposed addition of temporary holds.