Speech: Sean Hughes reviews the FMA's first three years

Good morning everyone and thank you for inviting me to speak to today.  I want to acknowledge my SLT colleagues Sue and Adam and the rest of my staff in the audience. The bouquets are for them, the brickbats are for me.

I applaud Workplace Savings for its ability to look forwards and promote the positive aspects of financial services. And I’m a great believer in doing that.  We live in an age of cynics and critics – and it’s healthy to hear of positive aspirations in a market which has been so characterised by negativity and gloom.

As Chief Executive of FMA, it’s my role to lead and inspire improvements in our financial markets - that is why I was delighted to accept this invitation to talk about the work we are doing to improve investor confidence. It’s an area I am personally passionate about and one where so much more can and should be done.

But before I get onto that, I put it to you that investor confidence is underpinned by one key ingredient.  An ingredient that all people (irrespective of their background knowledge, education and experience or personal financial situation) care deeply about.  An ingredient that all businesses, organisations, governments and nations value as critical to build sustainable, secure futures.  That key ingredient is trust.  Investor confidence and trust co-exist.  You cannot have one without the other and their interdependence makes the sum of their whole much more valuable than their individual parts. That is exactly why FMA has made building customer trust our highest priority.