FMA passes 10-year milestone
However, calls to shore up regulation of New Zealand's financial system started to get louder from around 2006, and when the country's largest finance company - Hanover Finance - began its rapid decline into receivership at the end of 2008 those calls turned into shouts.
As a result, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) was officially established on May 1, 2011, as part of the Financial Markets (Regulators and KiwiSaver) Bill, passed by the New Zealand parliament on April 7 of the same year.
Since then, the FMA has grown rapidly and has almost doubled in size with around 250 people now employed by the regulator, and with more responsibilities being handed to it in the coming months, will expand even further.
The FMA's first chief executive, Sean Hughes, was appointed in 2010 and oversaw a raft of enforcement cases brought against 17 Kiwi finance companies - such as Bridgecorp, Mark Hotchin's Hanover Finance, Lombard Finance, and the spectacular failure of Allan Hubbard and South Canterbury Finance.
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