Fintech marketing to Canadian banks and insurers: building pipeline around OSFI B-10, B-13 and E-23

The City of Toronto describes Toronto as the largest financial centre in Canada, with nearly 210,000 workers in financial services and headquarters of the country's largest financial institutions. For fintech and B2B SaaS companies, that concentration makes Toronto the obvious place to build a Canadian financial services pipeline. It also means the buyers are among the most regulated in the country.

Federally regulated financial institutions (FRFIs) follow OSFI guidelines that reach into how they choose and manage vendors. A champion in a business unit can love your product and still lose the deal to a third-party risk review that cannot find the answers it needs. Marketing that only speaks to the champion builds pipeline that stalls at procurement.

Read the guidelines themselves before you write content about them. This is our summary of what each means for your marketing.

OSFI's B-10 response notes that the guideline applies to all FRFIs except foreign bank branches and foreign insurance company branches, which follow Guideline E-4, and that institutions apply it in proportion to each arrangement's risk and criticality. Blakes' summary of the final guideline highlights audit rights for the institution and OSFI, more detailed guidance on subcontracting, and contract provisions that let the institution meet its technology and cyber incident reporting obligations.

In a Canadian bank or insurer, the buying group for a material technology arrangement usually includes the business sponsor, enterprise architecture, information security, third-party risk management, procurement, legal and, for AI products, model risk or validation. Each has a different question. Our rule is one asset per role, written in their language, available before the first meeting.

• Business sponsor: the outcome, the business case and comparable Canadian deployments you are allowed to name.
• Architecture and IT: integration patterns, data flows, hosting regions and portability.
• Information security: controls, certifications and audit reports, incident response and notification process.
• Third-party risk: subcontractors you rely on, financial health, business continuity and exit support.
• Procurement and legal: your standard position on audit rights, data segregation and incident notification.
• Model risk (AI products): model documentation, monitoring, explainability and change management.

The number of target accounts is small, which suits account-based marketing. This is the sequence we run.

1. Build the account list: Schedule I banks, insurers, pension funds and asset managers where your product fits, tiered by fit and existing relationships.
2. Map buying groups per account using sales input, LinkedIn and your CRM, including risk and security roles.
3. Publish a trust centre or security page and a vendor due diligence pack aligned to the questions above.
4. Run LinkedIn company list targeting by role: outcome content to sponsors, control and resilience content to security and risk.
5. Use small, invitation-only briefings in Toronto for architects and risk leads; follow up with the due diligence pack.
6. Report accounts engaged, roles reached, meetings and opportunities by tier from the CRM every week.

Expect long cycles. We plan financial services programs on at least a 12-month horizon and judge them on buying group coverage and stage progression, not quarterly lead volume.

Canadian financial institutions want evidence that a vendor has already passed a comparable review. The strongest proof is a named Canadian or comparable regulated customer that will take a reference call, followed by a description of the review you went through: which teams assessed you, what they asked for and how long onboarding took. Even without a logo you can name, a documented review process tells risk teams you know the path.

Proof should also match the role. Business sponsors want outcomes and timelines. Security and risk teams want artefacts: audit reports, policies, incident procedures and subcontractor lists. We plan content by role so each reviewer finds what they need without a sales call, and we gate only what genuinely needs an NDA.

These cost deals in risk review more often than in the demo.

• Claiming compliance with an OSFI guideline. The guidelines apply to the institution; say how you help the institution meet its obligations.
• Security pages with badges and no detail on incident notification, subcontractors or data location.
• Case studies naming US banks only, with no evidence of Canadian regulatory context.
• AI product pages with no model governance information ahead of E-23.
• Gating every risk document, which slows the reviewers you most need.

We work with clients in Toronto on account-based programs for financial services buyers. Our Toronto ABM page covers how we run named-account programs on Eastern Time with in-person sessions for kickoffs and planning.

Our fintech industry page explains how we plan campaigns for regulated buyers, from banks and insurers to payments and wealth platforms.

Our RevOps team builds the CRM reporting that shows buying group coverage by account. We are an official Demandbase partner and have implemented 6sense for more than five large enterprises.

To plan your Canadian financial services accounts, talk to our team.