Canada proposing new legislation to ban non-authorized insurance from bank Web sites

Canada is formally proposing new legislation that would prohibit banks from promoting “non-authorized insurance from all banking Web pages.”
This includes banning the display of online links to Web pages that promote non-authorized insurance.
The proposed regime would allow the “corporate Web page of a bank, where no financial products are promoted, to display links to insurance subsidiaries dealing in non-authorized insurance,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty wrote in letters to the Canadian Bankers Association and the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC).
Flaherty’s letter further describes a corporate Web page as “a page describing a bank’s corporate structure and business lines.”
He describes “authorized” insurance as insurance “generally related to credit and travel.”
The new regime would allow banks to promote authorized insurance and display links to Web pages that “only promote authorized insurance (e.g. Web pages of an insurance subsidiary of the bank or of a third party.),” Flaherty’s letter says.
But it would prohibit: 1) any links to Web pages where non-authorized insurance is promoted and 2) “automatic redirection” to a corporate Web page, where links can direct people to insurance subsidiaries dealing in non-authorized insurance.
A statement on the Department of Finance Canada Web site says draft regulations will be pre-published in Part I of the Canada Gazette, “giving stakeholders an opportunity to provide comments.”