FMA extends regulatory relief - focus on good conduct

Liam Mason.

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and its staff are coming under increasing pressure as its regulatory mandate grows - on its plate right now are the new licensing requirements under FSLAA, conduct and culture reviews, preparations for the implementation of the new conduct of financial institutions regulations (CoFI), changes to KiwiSaver default providers and monitoring, plus the new laws around climate change reporting.

This is coupled with recent negotiations with the government around essential services and what that means for the financial sector while under lockdown.

In a recent 'FSC Connect' webinar, hosted by the Financial Services Council and its chief executive Richard Klipin, some of the FMA's top brass gave their views on how the latest lockdown has affected the financial industry and how they were trying to manage their own workloads while not putting too much pressure businesses.

The FMA's director of regulation and acting general counsel Liam Mason led the discussion saying, like others in the sector, the FMA has "...a large slate of regulatory reform and implementation in front of us...and are coming at us at a rate of knots".