Quarterly Statement by the Council of Financial Regulators – November 2021

2 December 2021

The Council of Financial Regulators (CoFR) held its quarterly meeting on Tuesday 30 November. The meeting was chaired by Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr, and included senior representatives from the FMA, RBNZ, ComCom, MBIE, and the Treasury.

Key items of discussion were cyber resilience, the role of credit unions and building societies within the financial sector, and reports of the ongoing work in the priority areas of conduct and governance and financial inclusion. The group also discussed plans for the next meeting of the Trans-Tasman Banking Council to be held in early December.

CoFR noted the growing importance of cyber resilience to the financial sector. They discussed the work under way to assess and improve cyber resilience within the system. They also discussed plans for cooperation and coordination between agencies (both domestic and international), and with the industry to strengthen our response to future cyber attacks. CoFR agreed that a New Zealand cyber-attack protocol for financial regulators should be developed in 2022 to enhance the arrangements for responding to a cyber-attack on New Zealand’s financial system.

CoFR discussed the role credit unions and building societies perform within the financial sector, in particular the impact this type of entity had on financial inclusion. Further work was commissioned for 2022, which would build as much as possible on information that CoFR members already hold about the sector.

CoFR noted that the CCCFA law changes were coming into force on 1 December and agreed that it would be important to monitor the impact of the changes.