[Weekly Wrap] How much do consumers know?

One of the questions that has been asked by many people this week is how aware consumers are of exactly what they are doing with their personal finances.

Friday, June 7th 2013, 3:00PM

by Susan Edmunds

The discussion started with Mike Naylor, of Massey University, saying that commissions for financial advisers should be regulated. His comments came after Tony Vidler said the sector was suffering under a perception problem - consumers had the idea, correct or otherwise, that advisers had vested interests. He said there needed to be more transparency to arm consumers with the right information about the people they were dealing with.

Then, we had Morningstar rating New Zealand very near the bottom of the world for investor friendliness. A large portion of the blame was put at the feet of the country's regulation and disclosure requirements. It said Kiwi investors did not know enough about fund managers were doing with their money, although we managed to inch up the table from dead last in the last survey to second-to-last in the latest round. While all this talk of a need for more information might seem a bit convenient for a research house, Chapman Tripp said looming regulatory changes would improve the situation, anyway.

Finally, Massey University research Claire Matthews has put the spotlight on the banks' turnover of KiwiSaver customers. They lost more than half the number of customers they signed up over thelast financial year and while Matthews says it's unclear whether the customers were switching to other banks, she says consumers don't know enough about KiwiSaver in general. Sometimes they might not even have realised they've signed up and they're not getting anywhere near enough advice, even though for many people it's one of their most significant investment vehicles.

In other news, there might be financial trouble ahead for the FMA, and a Kiwi firm has entered into a joint venture with a Swiss fund manager.

On the mortgage front, all the talk has been about LVR restrictions - what, when and how. It looks like the RBNZ has picked "speed limits" rather than outright caps as the way to go. While some commentators think restrictions are just around the corner, others say we may not really notice their impact at all - at first, anyway.

We've also got people news and some new job listings.

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