For our capital markets to remain innovative and competitive, today’s regulatory approaches need to reflect business realities of market participants. With that in mind, the CSA takes a proactive approach to understanding and tailoring regulatory frameworks to emerging digital business models. CSA Collaboratory is a cohort based regulatory Testing Environment, where participants can explore and test of new financial concepts, new technologies, regulatory approaches and innovative business models in capital markets within a controlled and regulatory-flexible framework, with guidance from CSA Staff.
Insights from the Collaboratory can contribute to regulatory policy development and provide market participants with decision-useful intelligence.
Our Collaboratory provides capital markets participants an opportunity to participate in and collaborate with the CSA through different themed tests. To provide regulatory flexibility and encourage participation, tests may include:
Granting temporary exemptions, subject to parameters, from specific securities provisions, enabling market participants to test sound and innovative ideas that might not be permitted under the current regulatory framework and evaluate the viability and impact of their innovations in a controlled setting
Opportunities to collaborate with other test participants
Direct feedback from regulators
Avenues to provide real-time feedback to the CSA and contribute to policy making
Participating in the CSA Collaboratory can potentially:
Reduce barriers to market entry
Shorten the time to market
Improve outcomes for investors
Improve access to capital
How to Participate
The CSA will be periodically launching tests based on themes. Themes may be determined by the CSA as follows:
Consultations
Emerging trends and innovations
National and international regulatory and policy developments
Because this is a cohort-based environment, participation is subject to meeting eligibility criteria for the specific test.
Entities interested in partaking in a particular test are invited to consult the current themes for official guidelines of the ongoing testing environments for detailed information on eligibility requirements and the process of participation.
Leveraging Regional Opportunities to Develop Canadian Solutions
Although the CSA expects that some cohorts will be available across Canada, we recognize that there may be unique opportunities for tests to develop in only one or a few CSA jurisdictions. To that end the CSA Collaboratory is built to be flexible and agile and does not preclude localized testing environments. This approach enables the CSA to offer concurrent tests focusing on different themes.
Insights from each test will help the CSA with its efforts modernize the Canadian capital markets regulatory environment.
Current Theme
Spring 2025 Theme – Data Portability and e-KYC Our first testing environment will take a phased approach and will seek to provide the CSA with a greater understanding of the potential impacts of data portability and the process of collecting client’s information using digital means, known as electronic know-your-client solutions (e-KYC), to reduce regulatory burden while still maintaining investor protection.
