Finance

Canada Bank Watchdog Hints at Fixes to Boost Business Loans

Peter Routledge

Photographer: R.J. Johnston/Toronto Star/Getty Images

Canada’s banking regulator said he’s willing to be “a little bit less conservative” to increase competition in the sector.

“We would have to accept that if you let innovators in, for every 10 innovators, eight of them probably don’t succeed,” Peter Routledge, the country’s superintendent of financial institutions, told reporters after a speech in Toronto on Friday. “There’s this natural bias in our system that causes us to be averse to institution failure. If you want more innovation in the system, you’ve got to lighten up that aversion.”