BC Regulator Hit By Acute Staff Shortage
VANCOUVER, B.C.–British Columbia’s Auditor General has issued a warning that the regulator for the province’s credit unions is handicapped by an acute staff shortage. Auditor General Carol Bellringer released an audit saying that despite repeated efforts a staff shortage continues to plague the Financial Institutions Commission (FICOM).
According to the report, the primary challenge is the commission’s inability to offer competitive salaries for auditors due to government pay-scale limits. Ficom operates under the provincial Ministry of Finance.
“It’s like having a smoke detector in your house, but not buying the batteries,” Bellringer said in a released statement, noting the commission’s oversight process works, but lacks people to carry out the tasks. “No batteries, no early warning system.”
In another statement, Carolyn Rogers, the commission’s CEO, said she has been warning about the issues raised in the audit for the past three years. Rogers said Ficom should be able to spend the money raised from fees levied on credit unions to carry out its role as regulator.
“That includes the ability to set compensation levels in a very competitive market so that it can hire and retain the staff needed to do the job,” Rogers said in the statement. “One of the unintended consequences of the government’s restraint policies has been to impose operating restrictions on a regulator that does not draw its funding from government.”
According to the report, the regulator has a staff vacancy rate of 37%, and the shortage isn’t just a problem for regulators, according to analysts. It also means a shortage of real estate auditors, since both draw from the same staff pool at the commission.
“When you think about the responsibilities within Ficom — pensions, credit unions, real estate, insurance — the impact of a lack of regulation could be devastating,” said one government representative. “We saw in the United States what happens when these industries are not properly regulated.”