Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. As somebody that is sitting on the select committee the Finance and Expenditure Committee as well as the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee it is my pleasure to stand here and speak on the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill.To those people who have just tuned into Parliament TV or are listening via the radio those people that may be a little bit you know not too familiar with how the process of Parliament goes—as am I still finding my way as a new MP—this here is an omnibus bill. So this is a time-saving bill. This is the kind of bill where we can put through a series of amendments and do it all at the same time rather than putting through consecutive amendments through different bills and taking up too much time in the House. This particular omnibus bill makes amendments to the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008 and it also repeals the Financial Advisers Act 2008 as well.Before I go into the detail of this particular bill I just want to take a moment to recognise the many Māori trusts and organisations around New Zealand that have money invested that go to financial advisers for good sage advice and hope that when they get there and they're sitting around the table with somebody that has a whole lot more detailed knowledge about the financial sector and about investments and the like—actually this bill is something that is going to help those situations because it helps to clarify and simplify some of those processes. We need to keep people in mind I guess as we are putting legislation through the House and make sure that it's friendly for people out there—real New Zealanders—so that they get to understand it in a very simple form. That is exactly what these amendments seek to do.The review has been undertaken by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and it concluded there were a number of problems with the existing regime and also with the financial advice. The current regime was considered to be unnecessarily complex and did not adequately raise standards for all financial advice services. There were a bunch of financial services and advice also that wasn't being offered. So the report came back the conclusions were put forward—and I want to thank all of the people that have put their effort into this particular piece of legislation. As previous speakers have said this is a bill that's been going for quite some time now. So thank you to all of those people that have put effort into it and also congratulations to the Hon Kris Faafoi for introducing this into the House and being the one that's going to finish this—the job that was started quite some time ago.In the bill certain changes have been noted. Financial advisers will have to put the interests of their clients first. And isn't that a lovely thing to have? Isn't that a stake that you can put in the ground first up? So just note first and foremost that financial advisers will have to put the interests of their clients first. In the bill there will also be a simplification of categories of financial advisers. Previously they were a little bit convoluted a little bit complicated. Authorised financial advisers were a category registered financial advisers were another category and then there was a third category of qualified financial entities. All of those categories will be removed in this and will be replaced with either financial adviser" or "a nominated representative" both of which are a whole lot simpler to understand and to digest. Financial advisers will be licensed at the firm level rather than at the individual level which is also a plus and disclosure requirements will also be enhanced.A code of conduct working group has also been appointed and I want to take just a little bit of time to thank everybody that was part of that working group. I want to just refer to them individually so that they get their dues for the efforts that they put in here. So I want to make a special mention to Angus Dale-Jones who was the chair of this particular working group. He was also previously a board member of the Professional Advisers Association. I want to thank the chair for all of the work that he put into that particular piece of work. Barbara Benson was also on there too. She was a consumer and dispute resolution representative—a previous manager teacher education at the Education Council of New Zealand. So I'd like to thank Barbara for the significant work that she put into this particular piece of work. Brian McCulloch a consumer dispute resolution representative—he was an independent consultant an independent director at Utilities Disputes Ltd. I'd like to thank him for his work. John Berry who is the chief executive officer of Pathfinder Asset Management—thank you to him for his work. Graeme Edwards who is the general counsel and company secretary at the ASB Bank should also be congratulated for the significant work that he put in. Paul Mersi is an independent consultant who was part of that working group. Rebecca Vanderbom is the head of financial advice delivery and service for Milford Asset Management and is also an authorised financial adviser. Shane Edmond is the head of private client services at Forsyth Barr and a member of the current code committee—Tim van de Molen: Are you just going to say names for 10 minutes?TAMATI COFFEY: Very good. And finally one more on that list. I couldn't go without mentioning the great work that Therese Singleton did on that particular piece of work—the general manager sales and advice at AMP.That code working group was appointed. They prepared a new code of conduct before the committee. They'll also allow for the code of conduct to be developed earlier than would otherwise have been the case. I again would like to congratulate all of those advisers for their work.As previous speakers have also mentioned there is the robo-advice which is being incorporated into that. I also just want to acknowledge all of the talk that we have had in the House this week just about bringing our legislation bringing our services into the modern age by using technology and IT bringing that into legislation too. So robo-advice is definitely a big part of that.This is a very fine piece of legislation that has had support from various submissions which have been canvassed as one of our earlier speakers talked about. There have been workshops held on this. There have been a lot of summaries on this. It's gone through a rigorous process and for that reason I think that it should be very much commended to the House and I have no problems commending this particular bill to the House."