The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, May 4, edition that as Peter Routledge sat on international committees over his two-decade career in the Canadian financial sector, he grew increasingly curious about the divide between mounting innovation in banking in other countries and slower progress in Canada. The Globe's Stephanie Marotta writes that Mr. Routledge, now the superintendent of Canada's banking regulator, started to question whether tight regulatory guardrails in the country's financial sector were holding back competition and, consequently, economic growth. In conversations with fintechs and credit unions, he heard that the lengthy and cumbersome process of becoming a bank discouraged new players from joining the federally regulated financial system, contributing to Canada's lag in innovation compared with global peers. In June, the regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, is rolling out a pilot project that could strip years off the process to become a bank, in a bid to bring more competitors into the market to go head-to-head with Canada's six largest lenders. Mr. Routledge says, "It's fair to say we've tended to prioritize safety and soundness in difficult times."