Council of Financial Regulators: meeting on 31 August 2021
3 September 2021
The Council of Financial Regulators (CoFR) met on 31 August 2021. The meeting was chaired by FMA Chief Executive Rob Everett, and included senior representatives from FMA, RBNZ, ComCom, Treasury and MBIE. The meeting took place online due to Level 4 restrictions.
The group discussed impacts of the Covid-related lockdown and reflected on the noticeable differences between Level 4 in August 2021 and Level 4 in March/April 2020. Based on engagement and feedback from the industry, CoFR noted that most financial services businesses are not seeing significant market volatility or significant spikes in call volumes to date, but are alert to the potential for stresses to appear as the lockdown continues.
System-wide issues related to which parts of financial services are designated essential services have been largely resolved but some dialogue continues.
Regulators have moved to delay a number of initiatives and activities and members of CoFR are continuing to consider requests for regulatory relief. Details of any regulatory relief will be published by the relevant agency and on the CoFR website.
CoFR recently published a list of regulatory initiatives and this list continues to be kept under watch.
View the regulatory initiatives (PDF 637KB)
Engagement with industry has been extensive and regulators wish to acknowledge industry’s open engagement. Regulators are particularly keen to hear from financial services businesses on any issues they notice emerging or developing.
CoFR noted that the Reserve Bank had recently published its economic assessment in the August Monetary Policy Statement.