Good conduct

Our Chief Executive, Rob Everett recently spoke at the Financial Services Council and Workplace Savings NZ 2018 National Conference about the role that trust plays in financial services. We aim to build confidence in the markets through our focus on conduct, and on the governance, systems and processes that deliver good outcomes for customers.

Closely related to this, our work programme has also been dominated by the Conduct and Culture Review, in conjunction with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. In our review, we are making assessments across four broad themes: governance, conduct risk management, customer focus and remediation. We are looking at the intent of the organisations, but also how it is actually working in practice. We have largely completed our on-site reviews of Banks and we have commenced our on-site reviews of insurance firms. We expect to be able to provide a report on our findings in the banking sector in early November and in December for insurance firms.

And lastly on governance, we think high standards of corporate governance in New Zealand companies is vital for supporting investor confidence. We have recently worked with the Institute of Directors to refresh and update our quick reference guide, which can be found here. It outlines some of the legal requirements, ethical considerations and best practice areas for directors to consider, so they can be effective in the role.

Simone Robbers

Director of Strategy and Risk and Acting Director of External Communications and Investor Capability, FMA

30 September

AFA information returns: Submissions close Sunday 30 September 2018. More >

This is one of the questions we asked New Zealanders in our Sorted Money Week KiwiSaver Risk Quiz.  Designed to help KiwiSaver members understand how to react in stormy investment markets, 11,000 have tested their knowledge so far.

Scores were higher than expected for some of the questions – 94% knew it was normal for their KiwiSaver balance to go up and down. However, investors did struggle with two of the questions, highlighting potential areas of focus for us and our investor capability work.

In the spirit of Maori language week, we thought we’d remind you of our recent decision to grant an exemption to enable disclosure statements to be provided in both te reo Māori and English. We think this will mean a PDS could be provided in a more engaging and accessible form for those who are more comfortable receiving information in te reo Māori.

We are carrying out targeted consultation on the draft exemption notice, including the scope of the conditions and aim to have it finalised in the coming months.

Please email consultation@fma.govt.nz for more information or if you are interested in producing a dual-language PDS.

Consultations on the proposed exemptions below closed recently. We are considering submissions and will update you on our decisions when they are made:

• Exemption for restricted schemes from custodian assurance requirements;
• Exemption from the requirement to disclose the name of individual loan assets.

KiwiSaver Annual Report 2018

Next month, we’ll be publishing our KiwiSaver Annual Report 2018, which reports on the main KiwiSaver activities and trends this year. Promoting an effective KiwiSaver market is a critical priority for us.