Countdown to CoFI: Public awareness campaign set to launch

The Financial Markets Authority will soon launch an advertising campaign targeting consumers encouraging them to measure their bank, non-bank deposit taker or insurer’s products and services against the criteria set out in their Fair Conduct Programme.

Friday, March 21st 2025, 11:24AM

by Kim Savage

The Financial Markets Authority will soon launch an advertising campaign targeting consumers encouraging them to measure their bank, non-bank deposit taker or insurer’s products and services against the criteria set out in their Fair Conduct Programme.

The development and regulator approval of an FCP is the core requirement of the Conduct of Financial Institutions legislation, which takes effect from March 31st. A summary of how the company complies with the principles set out in its FCP needs to be added to institution websites to give consumers access.

Michael Hewes, FMA Director Deposit Taking, Insurers and Advice, told Good Returns consumers are at the centre of the legislation and they need to understand what it means for them. There is also a push from the Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister’s office for the FMA to ensure messaging flows through to those it is designed to benefit.

“It is unique for us as a Crown entity, to actually spend some money on advertising,” he says.

The highly-targeted consumer campaign for social media will launch at the beginning of April.

“What it does, it highlights to consumers the benefit of CoFI and what they should be looking for when they're dealing with a financial institution such as the FCP summary page on the website.”

The FMA wants consumers to better understand what information is available to them, says Hewes.

“Consumers such as you and I can actually look and think, ‘gosh, are any of these banks the right one to go through?’ and it gives a bit of a deep dive into their complaints processes as well.

“It's a real kind of nice sort of look into a financial institution, to see if they actually meet my needs and decide if this is an institution I want to deal with.”

Consumers will be reminded of their options, says Hewes, if the conduct of an institution is not up to scratch.

“Complain to your institution, complain to your advisor, if it's a deadlock, then you go through to the ombudsman schemes. And we need to promote more use and awareness of those.”

Years of CoFI catch-ups pays off for FMA

Reflecting on the journey through to now when CoFI comes into force, Michael Hewes says all of the guidance issued has been created in collaboration with the sector, with anywhere between 100 to 160 engagements bi-monthly, from c-suite to boards to advisors. The FMA expects to release further insights from its licensing process early next month, but Hewes is confident there is a good level of preparedness at a high level.

“A lot of our focus and effort was supporting some of the smaller, non-bank deposit takers, some of the smaller insurers with less resources. So we went through and put out a lot of additional guidance.

“I led the 2018-19 Conduct and Culture Reports with the Reserve Bank and the industry actually acknowledged there were gaps, and they have worked really, really hard to improve their maturity.

“It is certainly our observation, there's been quite a seismic shift and improvement, and generally they just continue to go through and follow the CoFI track.”

As well as encouraging consumers to hold institutions to account, the FMA is tasked with keeping an eye on the CoFI licence-holders to ensure they continue to comply. But Hewes says early monitoring of the regime will not look too different to now.

“Certainly from a monitoring perspective, the first few months, what we will be doing is just continuing to work with industry, putting out guidance if it's needed, and supporting them,” he says.

Tags: CoFI FMA