New Zealand Watchdog Bites Banks Over Pay

Tom Burroughes

16 November 2018

A New Zealand regulator has fired a broadside at the country's financial sector, saying that employees' sales-focused pay, and lax controls, will build up risks of misconduct and other problems.

has added its voice to concerns raised recently by the FMA/Reserve Bank of New Zealand Conduct and Culture review of New Zealand’s banks. And the reports come as the wealth and banking sector in neighbouring Australia has been rocked by a run of mis-selling and money laundering control scandals.

The FMA's review found that bank incentive schemes are "highly sales-focused"; controls are ineffective in reducing staff misbehaviour; boards and senior managers ask for and get little information about the risks linked to incentives; and banks have not gone far enough in tightening controls and changing how staff are paid.

“The way that banks choose to reward and incentivise their staff is at the heart of the culture that boards are establishing in these firms. We expect banks to ensure they achieve consistently good outcomes for their customers. This includes designing and managing incentive schemes in a way that delivers positive outcomes for customers over the life cycle of the products they hold," Liam Mason, FMA director of regulation, said.

The review focused on the incentives in place for frontline bank staff at 21 May 2018. Alongside information requested from nine banks in the review, the FMA spoke to 68 salespeople and 22 managers from the five largest banks by customer number.

The 2008 financial crisis has prompted regulators in a number of countries to tighten rules on how bank staff are paid to reduce unsafe risk-taking, such as forcing firms to defer bonus payments - as has been the case in the UK, for example.