Recently appointed director of regulation Liam Mason, shares his thoughts.

It’s a privilege to be the new director of regulation at the FMA. This is an exciting time to take on a new role, backed by a dedicated and talented team.

Across our Auckland and Wellington offices, our priority is to help businesses adapt to the new regulatory regime. We do this through: licensing, exemptions, information, and guidance. This update covers some of what we do, such as our current consultation on risk indicators and descriptions of managed funds.

Our focus
Our regulatory work is focused on areas identified in our Strategic Risk Outlook. Examples are our work on governance and culture among businesses in financial markets. 

An important part of this is to raise the level of contact between firms that have a significant presence in our markets and our senior executives. This is what we call entity-based relationship management.

This deepens our understanding of the firms we regulate. Open communication ensures we can each share our priorities and concerns.

How we respond to emerging risks
As we deepen our supervisory contact with licensed firms, we need to keep an eye on the financial services and investment activities that fall outside our day-to-day supervisory reach — this requires we keep an eye on the perimeter of regulation.

The new fair dealing rules mean the FMA's mandate extends across almost all financial services, products, and investments.  Part of our job here is to improve our understanding of activities along this perimeter so we can assess and respond to emerging risks.

Tell us your concerns
This is a real challenge with scarce resources. But here, our interests and those of the regulated population are completely aligned as we aim to keep confidence in our markets and our regulation.

The best information about conduct along the edges of regulation comes from those in the market. I’d like to encourage you to let us know what you are seeing. Tell us your concerns, whether or not the conduct you are seeing is within, or outside, regulated firms.

Liam Mason

Director of Regulation, FMA