Strengthening Confidence Together: Remarks at BCFSA’s 2025 Financial Services Forum

• Industry Communications

14 November 2025

British Columbia Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) convened its Financial Services Sector Forum on Nov. 13 in Vancouver, where industry leaders, regulators, policy experts, and thought leaders explored how change creates both challenges and opportunities for building a stronger, more inclusive financial services sector in British Columbia. 

In his opening remarks, CEO Tolga Yalkin emphasized the regulator and industry’s shared responsibility to foster confidence in the financial services sector. 

Read the full text of his speech below.  

Opening Address | Tolga Yalkin, Nov. 13, 2025

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This forum brings together leaders from across British Columbia and Canada—credit unions, insurers, trust companies, pension plans, mortgage brokers, real estate professionals, and property developers. We share a common purpose: building a thriving financial sector that serves British Columbians well.

Good intentions alone aren’t enough. To make that vision real, we need to understand the world we operate in—especially now, when change is coming fast and from every direction. This event is about making sense of that change together, so we can respond with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Let me start with a question. When was the last time you did something that required trust—signed a mortgage, transferred money online, or clicked “accept” on a document you barely skimmed—and didn’t think twice about it?

That’s trust. It’s the quiet assumption that the system will do what it’s supposed to do—that the people on the other end are acting in good faith.

Now think about a time when that trust was shaken—when a system failed, a promise was broken, or something didn’t go as expected. How did it change what you did next? How long did it take before you trusted again?

Trust is the foundation. It’s what allows people to take risks, make plans, and believe that tomorrow will honour the promises made today. And that kind of trust doesn’t just happen—it’s built through what people and institutions do every day.

Confidence is both an act and an outcome

The word confidence comes from the Latin confidere—“to act together with trust.” It reminds us that assurance isn’t a mood or a policy; it’s a behaviour. It’s something we build together through choices, consistency, and conduct.

When people act with trust—when they deliver on their promises, explain clearly, or choose fairness even when no one is watching—public faith takes shape. Confidence endures because those acts are repeated and reinforced over time.

When we think about confidence, we think about it as both the means and the measure—the process that creates trust and the condition that shows it’s been earned.

If confidence is built through how we act, the question becomes: How do we sustain it when it’s under pressure—not only for us, but for the generations who will inherit the systems we build today?

Confidence is under pressure

Across the world, public trust in institutions is being tested—by volatility, by accelerating technology, and by disappointment when systems fall short.

Moments of pressure reveal whether our connections hold—whether the trust that joins our institutions can adapt as quickly as the world around us.

Confidence has always been the spark that keeps financial systems moving. It’s what lets people buy homes, save for retirement, or start businesses without second-guessing whether the system will work for them.

And that kind of confidence doesn’t come from rules alone—it comes from the actions of those who serve the public directly.

At BCFSA, our role is to strengthen the conditions under which that reliability can thrive—across markets, across professions, and across time. Our purpose is simple: to make sure the trust built each day is reinforced by the way the system itself works.

When confidence takes root, the sector flourishes—and the economy grows with it.

Confidence is collective work

If confidence means acting with trust, then it can never be the work of one actor alone. By its very nature—and original definition—it is something done together, through the interactions, decisions, and judgments that connect all parts of the financial system.

Every action taken in one corner of the marketplace ripples across to another:

• A decision in a credit-union boardroom.
• An explanation offered by a mortgage broker.
• A claim handled fairly by an insurer.
• A risk acted on by a managing broker.

Each contributes to the same marketplace of trust.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” The same truth applies here: every action in our system, no matter how small, affects all indirectly.

Thus, confidence depends both on what each of us does individually and on what we build collectively. It’s created when our separate actions reinforce one another instead of colliding, when we are consistent enough, and aligned enough, that people experience the system as coherent and dependable.

Institutions—credit unions, insurers, pension funds, and trust companies—set the standard through their governance, culture, and conduct. They show what stability and integrity look like in practice.

Professionals—real estate licensees, mortgage brokers, and property developers—give standards life in their daily work, as the face of the system for many British Columbians, turning principles into lived practice.

And regulation binds these efforts together—keeping the system fair and clear—and steady enough to earn people’s trust.

Acting together: understanding, principles, and shared purpose

To act together, we first have to see the world together. Confidence begins in understanding—in taking the time to see the same facts and the same possibilities through a shared lens.

That’s what this forum is about. We can only move in step if we make sense of the landscape collectively—how change is unfolding—and what it means for the people we serve.

But we also need a sense of what guides us when the details can’t be prescribed. No rulebook can capture every situation we face. What keeps the system trustworthy are the ideas beneath the rules: fairness, transparency, prudence, and service to the public.

Those principles are the compass points that let us navigate when the map runs out. They give shape to professional judgment; they turn discretion into discipline. They are what allow independence and accountability to coexist.

And finally, acting together requires awareness of our interdependence. Every choice we make, whether by a lender, an insurer, a managing broker, or a regulator, fosters the same ecosystem of trust.

Recognizing that connection changes how we decide: it invites humility, patience, and the understanding that our individual actions are part of a shared outcome.

To act together, then, is to understand the world as it is, to be guided by the principles that make it fair, and to act with awareness of the people and institutions our decisions touch. When we do that, confidence becomes both the means of our work and its result—expressed in every act and proven in every outcome.

The forum was designed deliberately to help us make sense of change together. After the Minister’s remarks, Stephen Poloz will set the scene with a keynote on the tectonic shifts shaping the global economy and what they mean for financial services.

From there, we’ll dive deeper into two critical areas: first, a panel on BC’s evolving economic landscape—how shocks and shifts are playing out locally—and then a discussion on housing policy in practice, exploring how reforms are reshaping the market.

Finally, we’ll turn to regulation, where I’ll join Dexter John of Ontario’s FSRA and Yves Ouellet of Quebec’s AMF to share perspectives on how regulators are thinking about their role in this fast-changing world.

Each session builds on the last, so by the end of the day, we’ll not only see the landscape more clearly but perhaps have a deeper sense of how our actions—across institutions, professions, and oversight—can align to strengthen confidence together.