Speaker

Mark Zelmer, former deputy superintendent, financial institutions, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, fellow-in-residence, C.D. Howe Institute

Mark Zelmer has more than 40 years of experience dealing with financial sector policy and regulatory issues, with roles at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the Bank of Canada and the International Monetary Fund. He retired as deputy superintendent of financial institutions at the OSFI in 2016.

Zelmer was an active contributor to the global regulatory reform agenda in the wake of the global financial crisis. As a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, he chaired the development of several macro prudential components of the Basel III Capital Accord and led a peer review assessment of the European Union's adoption of Basel III capital requirements. He was also on the Financial Stability Board's Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation and co-chaired its work on structural vulnerabilities associated with the global asset management industry.

Zelmer has been busy since retiring from the OSFI. He currently sits on the board of directors of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Compensation Corp. — commonly known as Assuris — and State Street Trust Co. of Canada — a Canadian subsidiary of State Street Corp. He’s a fellow-in-residence at the C.D. Howe Institute where he has written many papers on monetary and financial sector issues. In response to a request from the U.K. government and the Bank of England in 2018, he conducted an independent review of the prudential supervision of a medium-sized U.K. bank — the Co-operative Bank — that nearly failed in 2013 and presented the report to the U.K. Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee. He also helped the International Monetary Fund assess the stability of the Japanese and U.S. financial systems in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Zelmer holds a master of science in business administration degree from the University of British Columbia where he specialized in finance and economics and a bachelor of commerce honours degree from Queen's University.