Canada May Moderate Insurance Rules

By Sean B. Pasternak

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s request that banks drop online advertising for their insurance services may be “moderated,” the head of Bank of Nova Scotia’s domestic banking unit said.

Flaherty asked banks in October to “quickly” remove marketing for insurance products from their Web sites, saying it violates government restrictions. Bank of Montreal is the only bank among Canada’s five biggest lenders that has removed the insurance services link from its main Web site.

“I think that it will be moderated somewhat,” Christopher Hodgson, Scotiabank’s head of Canadian banking, said yesterday in an interview in St. John’s, Newfoundland. “I’m not thinking that it will be dramatically different than what they’ve suggested originally.”

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