Oh, another tidbit that I’d throw in the mix, just as an afterthought – I’d totally smack the BC FSA upside the head on their data collections, and any other government regulator type agency that’s over collecting granular citizen data under similar silly pretenses. I’d also likely take a slightly different approach on AI regulations, though attempt to keep it generally in line with the EU counterparts, as the most likely ‘friendly’ block going forward.
Regulators are generally tasked with maintaining the viability and stability of critical industries, and the businesses there in. It’s important to have regulation of FIs, but regulators like the BC FSA have gone overkill, to the point that they’re basically cited as the #1 reason for FI’s needing to merge… to get bigger to handle regulatory burdens and overreach. In BC, it’s sorta like they were put in charge of ensuring a thriving forest, but then they decided that to do that, they had to reduce it down to just 4-6 big trees, and then to map out each individual leaf on those trees. They really don’t need all the data they’re collecting, to manage aggregate risks in the ecosystem – their collection just adds to this foreign exposure issue. It’s possible to do 90% of their risk analysis using aggregate, annonymous data collected from the FIs. If there are specific dimensions / concerns they want FIs focused on for ‘internal’ risk reasons, they can work WITH industry during reviews to make sure they’re tracking the ‘right’ variables and being transparent with stakeholders etc.
From a Risk Management perspective, it’s a semi easy thing to describe how the BC FSA has failed miserably at its job: If the Mitigations for a Risk outweigh the cost of that Risk occurring, you shouldn’t apply the mitigations. Ie. If it costs you $100k to prevent a potential ‘threat’ that could cost you $1k in fines/damages, you should just accept the $1k cost. Likewise, if your regulation has killed off roughly 75% of the provinces financial institutions, while there’ve been 0 cases of a BC financial institution “failing due to mismanagement” since like the 80s (and back then, it was an outlier case!), your regulations suck and you should feel bad. One of the biggest indicators of the health of a forest/ecosystem, is its stability / ability to renew itself organically: ie. lots of competition, a reasonable amount of turn over, which is filled in with new entrants. You can monitor the health of a populace / forest by looking at how many trees are there, and getting a rough report on whether they’re healthy or not, without needing to map out every leaf.
Regulatory hurdles are also often used to create moats around industries/businesses, so there’s this delicate balancing act needed to allow for innovation, while still protecting against industry-wide negative risks. The more regulation surrounding a setup, the more locked out new entrants are. You don’t want to allow OpenAI to dictate the terms for new competitors to startup and challenge OpenAI, sorta thing. Like the Tumbler Ridge tragedy was… tragic. But if new regulations come in placing onerous oversight / reporting obligations on all AI companies as a result, it’ll be that much harder for a ‘new’ Canadian company to get rolling. So with regards to tech-side regulation, I’d definitely try to align with the EU models, but I’d aim to have them be more unique to Canada – we still need a small moat between us and the EU platforms, but we need a much bigger moat between us and authoritarian regimes.
Lots to unpack here. This is the big thing at the moment and I’d like to know what I can. Would you be willing to talk on the phone at some point? I’ve been going through something hard and I don’t want to cry about it, but I think it would help a lot if someone smart and passionate in a subject I know little about ranted at me. Not like a formal interview, just a talk
If I’m being honest, for some reason I have this aversion to voice chats with strangers from social media sites, heh. It’s totally nonsensical in some ways, as I’m fine chatting with people in games, and/or meeting people in real life, but for some reason ¯(ツ)/¯.
If you do have questions about these sorts of things though, and are in Canada, I’d suggest reaching out to your financial institution a bit and peppering them with some questions. At the very least, you’d get a sense of how they’re looking at the situation, and whether you felt like they were putting in appropriate due diligence to safeguard your interests. If the note about going through something hard was more in relation to wanting a distraction to take your mind off other things, I can empathize, but I’m also so terribly awkward on phone calls that it’d prolly end up doing more harm than good. I’d also likely pester you to try and find out what the ‘something hard’ was that you’re going through, in a very tactless fashion, as I’m really not all that good with that sorta thing.
Not a problem. I was just thinking you’re an interesting person with a fount of information. Nothing wrong with not wanting to chat with a stranger. I’ll be around if you change your mind but no pressure ofc.
I’m in the US but I’ve been looking into educating myself more about financial institutions and that’s why I was so curious. Plus you sounded really well-informed and I’m very close to Canada geographically and thinking about moving there so I need to learn all I can before I make that decision.
Oh, another tidbit that I’d throw in the mix, just as an afterthought – I’d totally smack the BC FSA upside the head on their data collections, and any other government regulator type agency that’s over collecting granular citizen data under similar silly pretenses. I’d also likely take a slightly different approach on AI regulations, though attempt to keep it generally in line with the EU counterparts, as the most likely ‘friendly’ block going forward.
Regulators are generally tasked with maintaining the viability and stability of critical industries, and the businesses there in. It’s important to have regulation of FIs, but regulators like the BC FSA have gone overkill, to the point that they’re basically cited as the #1 reason for FI’s needing to merge… to get bigger to handle regulatory burdens and overreach. In BC, it’s sorta like they were put in charge of ensuring a thriving forest, but then they decided that to do that, they had to reduce it down to just 4-6 big trees, and then to map out each individual leaf on those trees. They really don’t need all the data they’re collecting, to manage aggregate risks in the ecosystem – their collection just adds to this foreign exposure issue. It’s possible to do 90% of their risk analysis using aggregate, annonymous data collected from the FIs. If there are specific dimensions / concerns they want FIs focused on for ‘internal’ risk reasons, they can work WITH industry during reviews to make sure they’re tracking the ‘right’ variables and being transparent with stakeholders etc.
From a Risk Management perspective, it’s a semi easy thing to describe how the BC FSA has failed miserably at its job: If the Mitigations for a Risk outweigh the cost of that Risk occurring, you shouldn’t apply the mitigations. Ie. If it costs you $100k to prevent a potential ‘threat’ that could cost you $1k in fines/damages, you should just accept the $1k cost. Likewise, if your regulation has killed off roughly 75% of the provinces financial institutions, while there’ve been 0 cases of a BC financial institution “failing due to mismanagement” since like the 80s (and back then, it was an outlier case!), your regulations suck and you should feel bad. One of the biggest indicators of the health of a forest/ecosystem, is its stability / ability to renew itself organically: ie. lots of competition, a reasonable amount of turn over, which is filled in with new entrants. You can monitor the health of a populace / forest by looking at how many trees are there, and getting a rough report on whether they’re healthy or not, without needing to map out every leaf.
Regulatory hurdles are also often used to create moats around industries/businesses, so there’s this delicate balancing act needed to allow for innovation, while still protecting against industry-wide negative risks. The more regulation surrounding a setup, the more locked out new entrants are. You don’t want to allow OpenAI to dictate the terms for new competitors to startup and challenge OpenAI, sorta thing. Like the Tumbler Ridge tragedy was… tragic. But if new regulations come in placing onerous oversight / reporting obligations on all AI companies as a result, it’ll be that much harder for a ‘new’ Canadian company to get rolling. So with regards to tech-side regulation, I’d definitely try to align with the EU models, but I’d aim to have them be more unique to Canada – we still need a small moat between us and the EU platforms, but we need a much bigger moat between us and authoritarian regimes.
Lots to unpack here. This is the big thing at the moment and I’d like to know what I can. Would you be willing to talk on the phone at some point? I’ve been going through something hard and I don’t want to cry about it, but I think it would help a lot if someone smart and passionate in a subject I know little about ranted at me. Not like a formal interview, just a talk
If I’m being honest, for some reason I have this aversion to voice chats with strangers from social media sites, heh. It’s totally nonsensical in some ways, as I’m fine chatting with people in games, and/or meeting people in real life, but for some reason ¯(ツ)/¯.
If you do have questions about these sorts of things though, and are in Canada, I’d suggest reaching out to your financial institution a bit and peppering them with some questions. At the very least, you’d get a sense of how they’re looking at the situation, and whether you felt like they were putting in appropriate due diligence to safeguard your interests. If the note about going through something hard was more in relation to wanting a distraction to take your mind off other things, I can empathize, but I’m also so terribly awkward on phone calls that it’d prolly end up doing more harm than good. I’d also likely pester you to try and find out what the ‘something hard’ was that you’re going through, in a very tactless fashion, as I’m really not all that good with that sorta thing.
Not a problem. I was just thinking you’re an interesting person with a fount of information. Nothing wrong with not wanting to chat with a stranger. I’ll be around if you change your mind but no pressure ofc.
I’m in the US but I’ve been looking into educating myself more about financial institutions and that’s why I was so curious. Plus you sounded really well-informed and I’m very close to Canada geographically and thinking about moving there so I need to learn all I can before I make that decision.