FMA's strategic priorities revealed
In a speech at the Financial Services Council annual conference, Clare Bolingford, executive director for regulatory delivery at the Financial Markets Authority, talked about how New Zealand’s regulatory system has increasingly matured since the conduct obligations for financial obligations under the Financial Markets Conduct Act in 2013 was introduced, as well as shared about FMA’s strategic priorities.
“The FMC Act enabled the FMA to evolve from an enforcement regulator – cleaning up the mess of the finance companies – into a conduct regulator with a range of proactive tools, besides litigation, to influence conduct and investor outcomes into the future...” Bolingford (pictured above) said.
“This legislation took a high level, principles-based approach, only introducing detailed prescription where it is necessary for consistency in practices. This enables us all to respond to continually evolving risks, innovation and opportunities that emerge through various cycles.”
She said the same approach has been taken by the recent Conduct of Financial Institutions legislation.
“With CoFI and the new Financial Market Infrastructure regimes now in place, this brings New Zealand more closely into line with international jurisdictions, closing conduct gaps and implementing a fully formed twin peaks regulatory model,” Bolingford said.
“Twin peaks is simply where prudential and conduct regulators meet to support a robust, sound, and fair financial system. The important piece is to ensure we work closely and cooperatively where we share a responsibility to supervise and enforce.”
Connecting all these, the FMA leader said, is “a constantly evolving and maturing framework – and approach – to conduct regulation” in New Zealand, which ensures consistency for Kiwi firms, but also with standards, norms, and protections that have existed overseas for a very long time.
Bolingford said that FMA’s strategic priorities in the short to medium term were to successfully implement new legislative regimes, as well as:
- successfully transition towards an outcomes-focused approach to regulation
- better understand the drivers of market, provider, and consumer behaviour
- proactively minimise harmful conduct on the perimeter
- deter misleading value propositions of financial products and services
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