The rule change also carries a twist for one province
Mutual fund dealers are facing new limits on cross-family incentives. Amendments to National Instrument 81-105 - the rule that governs sales practices across Canada's mutual fund industry - were published in the Ontario Securities Commission Bulletin on August 20, 2026, and take effect October 1, 2026. The changes reach directly into how principal distributors compensate the representatives who sell their funds.
The core change is a new section, 2.4, aimed squarely at principal distributors. It says a distributor of one mutual fund can't also act as principal distributor for another mutual fund unless the two funds sit in the same fund family. That closes off a structural overlap that had let a single distributor hold the role across otherwise unrelated families.
A companion provision goes after compensation directly. New subsection 4.2(0.1) applies once a distributor is principal distributor for more than one fund in the same family - and bars it from paying representatives an incentive to recommend one of those funds over the other. In practice, it keeps a distributor from using compensation to steer advisors toward one of its own funds instead of another.
Section 7.1 of the instrument is repealed outright. The bulletin doesn't say what that section covered.
Firms get time to adjust. The amended instrument doesn't apply until October 1, 2028 to any fund still following the version of NI 81-105 that was in force on September 30, 2026 - a two-year runway to unwind any overlapping distributor roles or compensation arrangements the new rules would otherwise catch. Until then, the current version of NI 81-105 continues to apply in full.
Saskatchewan works on its own clock. If the instrument isn't filed with the province's Registrar of Regulations until after October 1, 2026, it takes effect there on whatever day it's actually filed, rather than the date used everywhere else. No other jurisdiction gets that flexibility under the terms of the amendment.
That two-year runway matters for any distributor currently holding the role across more than one fund family, since those arrangements would otherwise fall afoul of the new section 2.4 once the transition period ends. The full text of Amendments to National Instrument 81-105 Mutual Fund Sales Practices is available at https://www.osc.ca/en/securities-law/instruments-rules-policies/8/81-105/amendments-national-instrument-81-105-mutual-fund-sales-practices.
