Regulation


July 18, 2023by Cristian0

Another interest rate hike, another hit to Canadians to keep inflation in check, another time journalists reach out to the BAL for insights. I was on CTV national speaking about it. You can see the interview in this link. What’s cool about this link (active for 30 days) is that it also shows how many people viewed the interview. 3,520,000 persons. Wow, I’m amazed about the reach of these activities and humbled I get the chance to speak directly to so many Canadians. Thank you to everyone that tuned in and I hope I helped explain what’s going on!

The second coverage was at CTV London. This one did have a shareable link, and a piece of written news. The written news is in this link, and I’ve also embedded the interview below.

I had a bit of a slip that made the segment: what I wanted to say was that one of the factors within core inflation is service inflation, and that one hasn’t come down. Also, this round we had a surprisingly strong demand for goods. According to the BoC this is both due to savings from the pandemic that households are spending, and also because of very strong demand from the US for our goods.

The BoC is much more pessimistic about when they will control inflation, targeting now the second semester of 2025. This would come, however, with no recession. This is very uncertain though, as they themselves acknowledge. We’ll have to see.

In a more personal opinion, I believe the BoC is ok with a moderate recession as long as inflation comes back down, so they rather overdo it. Inflation expectations are really high both in consumers and businesses. These decisions are aimed at convincing everyone that they will keep hiking rates as long as necessary. I, for one, believe them.



April 24, 2023by Cristian0

Stock image of code of ethics

During 2022 I had the pleasure of participating on a series of workshops discussing the challenges in AI applied to financial institutions. I was part of a group of 30 professionals from industry and academia. The forum was organized by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), Canada’s prudential banking regulator. These discussions will inform the future regulation in the area that OSFI is targeting for release later in the year.

The report discusses the EDGE model for financial institutions: Ethics, Data, Governance, and Explainability. It aims to provide general guidelines to strike the right balance between regulation and innovation. I greatly enjoyed all discussions that led to this report, in my minor capacity as participant.

Give it a read in this link.