Faafoi KrisFINANCIAL SERVICES LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Can I acknowledge that this piece of legislation has come about from a review in 2016 to essentially rewrite the legislation and regulation in and around the financial advice sector in New Zealand. Can I acknowledge that these changes have been a long time signalled but obviously will come into force very soon. As I said to a group of financial advisers at a forum earlier today here in Wellington we will be working alongside the financial advice sector to ensure that the change in the regime in the financial advice sector is one that is done in the best interests of consumers to make wise informed and motivated decisions because as I pointed out to that audience some research done by the Retirement Commissioner's office found that 68 percent of New Zealanders are nervous about making basic financial decisions. A lot of that will have come about as a result of the relationship or in some cases the lack of a relationship that many New Zealanders may have with financial advisers. This piece of legislation goes a long way to amending a number of Acts—the Financial Markets Conduct Act the Financial Advisers Act and also the Financial Service Providers Act—to ensure that a much better regime in the interests of customers is in place around financial advice for New Zealand. I guess I have to put this piece of legislation into the context of other things that are happening in the finance sector. We had two reviews undertaken by the Financial Markets Authority and the Reserve Bank: the first one into the culture and conduct and practices of the banking industry which was delivered late in 2018 and also a similar review by those two regulators into the life insurance sector which was released in late January. As a result a regulatory gap was recognised in the areas of conduct and culture that the Government has already committed to ensure that we will close. But in a large way the Government recognised that there was an issue and it made a priority to get the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill that we are debating here this afternoon in train in order to make the changes that are required in the sector both for the sector to offer some surety given a long term of wondering what was going on because the review took place in 2016 and also for consumers who I think have been crying out for some certainty and a better relationship between financial advisers as well.I think if we overlay that some of the changes that are being made in Part 1 do pertain in somewhat of a way to some of the issues that have been borne out across the Tasman as part of the royal commission into the finance sector over there. We saw across the Tasman some blatant awful behaviour from some of the players—actually a lot of the players—in the financial services sector. As a result of that both of those reviews have taken place but I have great confidence that we foresaw some of those issues and progressed this piece of legislation.I'm sure there will be some debate and some questions in and around the FSLAB bill as we know it in our office. So I will listen to the debate with much interest and offer any answers to queries that may be offered up during the debate.