pc
nid 93579
Jun 30, 2026
kgurnani@vixio.com
New Zealand
Financial Markets Authority
financial services
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2044 charsNew Zealand Financial Markets Authority Sets Out Regulatory Priorities for 2026/27
On June 30, 2026, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) released its second annual Financial Conduct Report (FCR), outlining progress made over the past year and its regulatory priorities for 2026/27. The report reflects the FMA's commitment to improving outcomes for consumers, investors, and businesses across New Zealand's financial markets.
FMA Chief Executive Samantha Barrass highlighted key achievements over the past year, including improving access to financial advice, supporting innovation through a regulatory sandbox pilot, stepping up response to scams, and taking strong enforcement action against misconduct. The FMA's priorities for 2026/27 focus on four cross-sector themes aimed at addressing key risks and lifting conduct standards: managing conflicts from remuneration structures; product design for new and redesigned products; complaints; and fraud detection and prevention. A significant development is the transfer of responsibility for consumer credit to the FMA from July 1, 2026, bringing it under a single conduct regulator for financial services. This addition strengthens consumer protection and enables more consistent oversight across the financial system. The FMA recognises technology transformation as an increasingly important driver across the sector, particularly the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial system. While new technologies present opportunities to improve access and deliver better outcomes, the FMA's focus remains on supporting innovation while maintaining strong consumer protection and confidence in financial markets. The FMA operates in a global environment of significant uncertainty and heightened risk, reinforcing the importance of a robust, well-functioning financial system that supports New Zealanders and remains resilient.
The full Financial Conduct Report 2026/27 is available on the FMA website, providing transparency on key risks and opportunities the regulator intends to address, enabling industry to understand FMA priorities and expectations.
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2524 charsNew Zealand Financial Markets Authority Sets Out Regulatory Priorities for FY2026-27
On June 30, 2026, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) released its second annual Financial Conduct Report (FCR), outlining progress made over the past year and its regulatory priorities for financial year 2026-27.
The key broad-based priorities are:
Regulatory burden and innovation: The FMA will look to reduce unnecessary compliance burden, support innovation through its regulatory sandbox, and progress work toward a single conduct licence.
Emerging risks: The FMA will focus on private markets, virtual assets/tokenisation, and industry readiness for operational resilience. It notes that digitalisation and reliance on critical technology systems increase risks from outages, legacy systems and poor controls.
Complaints and remediation: Firms are expected to make it easier for consumers to complain, explain dispute-resolution options, identify root causes of harm and remediate customers quickly.
Scams and fraud: The FMA will continue work with banks, technology firms and other agencies to disrupt investment scams, improve information sharing and remove scam content.
Client assets: The FMA will continue engaging with MBIE on reforms to strengthen protections for assets held in custody, citing weaknesses in New Zealand’s custody regime and lessons from past fraud cases.
The FMA also laid out several sector-specific priorities:
Banks and non-bank deposit takers: The FMA will focus on whether products and services remain suitable for customers, whether firms self-report material fair-treatment issues, and whether firms invest in technology and controls to address root causes of harm. It also plans to publish data on savings and lending product interest-rate changes to improve transparency.
Financial advice providers: Priorities include vulnerable customers, mortgage and insurance-related misconduct, fees/commissions/incentives disclosure, custody of client money or property, and access to advice, including the potential role of AI and digital advice.
Consumer credit: The FMA takes on consumer credit regulation from 1 July 2026. Reported focus areas include lender monitoring, motor vehicle finance, mortgage fraud, commission conflicts, affordability and suitability assessments, and add-on products.
Capital markets and investment management: The FMA will focus on misleading wholesale-offer disclosures, ethical investment claims, insider conduct, continuous disclosure, fees and commissions, custody arrangements, liquidity risk management and related-party transaction controls.