Clark DavidHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you Mr Chair. The member again asserted that this is some kind of bill in search of a reason and I think it shows how out of touch the National Party really are. They don't mind thinking that it's fine that a bank's charging customers for credit card repayment insurance for which the customer receives no benefits. They don't think it's fine for a bank to continue to charge deceased clients premiums for credit card repayment insurance and life insurance. They don't think it's fine and so on and so we can go through this list of all of these instances—Hon Todd McClay: How often?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: And then the member asks how often; he wants some details. And I'm sure some details will just convert him.Hon Todd McClay: Yes it will.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: It will he says. He'll be right with us. OK so the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and Reserve Bank review identified 16—so this is just a simple sample they've done—specific remediation activities from their 2019 review across 10 insurers with a total remediation of $1.4 million. Now subsequent to that the FMA has had ongoing conduct and culture work because this triggered—this triggered—a search for more examples. So we've already got examples.Andrew Bayly: Outrageous!Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I know $1.4 million is nothing to Andrew Bayly but to a consumer who is struggling with the cost of living or with any other particular issue $1.4 million might be quite a lot of money. To the National Party nothing; they'd rather defend the banks' rights to carry on doing loose processes. But after that review they then set about looking at other examples to see what else was out there.So with remedial work carried out after the culture and conduct reviews life insurers have now identified another $7.8 million in remediation and approximately 400000 customers affected. Subsequent disclosures from some general insurers identified another $8 million in remediation. These are the kinds of examples I say across the House where consumers are at risk—and it's been identified through reviews and then follow-up work has identified yet more examples and more risk—and these reviews also have highlighted that there is a large regulatory gap here in New Zealand and that we do not currently have any general oversight or regulation of retail banking insurance unlike comparable jurisdictions like Australia or the United Kingdom. That means that the institutions themselves just don't have regulators who are able to detect these issues and risks so it's only these reviews we have to go on. They've already identified hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who've been ripped off—hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders millions of dollars. Furthermore in Australia where the parent companies of many of the banks operating here operate today they had a royal commission at a similar period of time led by Commissioner Sir Kenneth Hayne—the same institutions with similar cultures; parent organisations. They had people confessing to ranges of crimes and breaches including falsified client records forged signatures privacy breaches insider trading under payment of $80 million of employees' superannuation benefits—Commonwealth Bank of Australia parent of ASB; Westpac staff manipulating internal systems such as unauthorised opening of accounts and false recording of offers being made to customers in order to trigger bonuses; ANZ employee falsified more than 100 loan applications and two business bankers who colluded with third parties to make 47 fraudulent loans. These are examples where they have dug a bit deeper. They got a royal commission. But here in New Zealand they uncovered it and then they kept digging and they found hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders affected—even here in New Zealand without a royal commission—and millions of dollars owed. We have a regulatory gap here where we don't have the oversight that they have in Australia and the UK so we're actually more vulnerable to this kind of behaviour.So I think the case is pretty clear. If you believe in the rights of consumers and you want to make sure that consumers are getting a fair deal you back this bill. If however you want the banks to be able to carte blanche rip people off or insurers—hundreds of thousands of people without consequence—then you vote like the National Party intends to vote.