Weekly wrap: What a regulatory mess we have

No points for guessing the top story this week. It's a slam dunk to the politicians and their last minute changes to how advisers are going to be regulated. The contentious issue is that insurance and mortgage advisers don't need to be authorised and indeed it appears they are not allowed to get AFA status.

Friday, June 18th 2010, 3:00PM

Commerce Minister Simon Power says he will fix things, (see story here) but really it should not have got to this point.

There is plenty of comment on the site about this and I have summed up my thoughts on this regulation process here: How not to do it.

Also today we run a response from Consumer CEO Sue Chetwin to a critique of the institute's mystery shop of advisers. We hope to have more on this story next week.

The other story which made headlines was the banning of a Timaru-based adviser by the Securities Commission.

There have been other things happening too.

ASB has been the first bank to increase its short-term interest rates. We expect others to follow pretty soon. You can listen to some thoughts on this move over at Radio New Zealand. While ASB was the first to move after last week's OCR hike, they are not the highest rates from the banks. As you will see in our comprehensive table Westpac had moved pre the OCR announcement.

South Canterbury has been doing the rounds talking to investors about their plans for the future. Paul McBeth attended the Wellington event and reports on it in www.depositrates.co.nz

Dorchester has presented a new plan to its debenture holders. Two salient points are that the trustee says the company has a future (we haven't heard a trustee say that too often recently), and the Securities Commission panned the proposal. We have Dorchester's response on the site today.

In new appointments we have Van Eyk's New Zealand man defecting to Mercer and The National Partnership signing up some big names to its board. Details in People.

To round out the week Russell Hutchinson asks Who's afraid of the big bad banks?

« Don't blame us: Consumer

KiwiSaver mismatch a 'huge challenge' for advisers »

Special Offers