[The Wrap] Bye Bye Bayly

With Andrew Bayly's resignation from the Commerce portfolio in the past week the financial services industry has lost a long-overdue supporter in government. What will happen now?

Saturday, March 1st 2025, 11:57AM

With Bayly's resignation from the Commerce portfolio the financial services industry has lost a long-overdue supporter in government.

Historically neither National nor Labour have shown much enthusiasm for the commerce portfolio for years.

Commerce is actually one of the lowest ranked portfolios and the minister generally sits outside of cabinet.

There have been a string of ministers who have shown little or no interest in financial services; have had no vision for change - even though it is one of the biggest sectors of the economy, and some frankly have had no idea about the sector.

You just have to watch some of the speeches in Parliament to see the low level of understanding.

Bayly to his credit had prepared for the role while he was in opposition, engaged with stakeholders and in his own words was "enthusiastic" about making long overdue changes.

Despite a coalition agreement over-full with promises to keep each of the three parties happy, Bayly had remarkable success in getting some of his projects underway.

How well some of the changes are progressing is somewhat of a moot point. Arguably the one where questions need to be asked is the transfer of CCCFA from MBIE to the Financial Markets Authority.

While it was announced more than a year ago the transfer has yet to happen.

The one area he could have done more is to review KiwiSaver settings. The industry is in broad agreement KiwiSaver is long overdue for a revamp. While it has been incredibly successful there are changes which will make it better and help the economy grow. Somewhat of a mantra from the Prime Minister at the moment.

As minister he will also be getting the Review of Retirement Income Policies at the end of the year. Hopefully, the government will treat this seriously. The 2022 review only received and interim response from Government and the current government chose to make the interim report the final report.

What will be worrisome to the financial services sector is how much enthusiasm and drive will the new minister, Scott Simpson, have in progressing the action-packed agenda Bayly put together.

Bayly had experience in financial services, notably as an investment banker. Simpson on the other hand had manage a safety equipment company, was chief executive of Make-A-Wish Foundation and is steeped in National Party roles.

When he was first elected to Parliament in 2011 he is reported as having economic development - namely creating jobs to attract residents and pushing agriculture, aquaculture and horticulture forward - as his prime issue.

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