Regulation and supervision
The Reserve Bank regulates banks, insurers and non-bank deposit takers (including finance companies that take deposits from the public, building societies and credit unions), for the purpose of promoting the maintenance of a sound and efficient financial system.
The Bank is also one of three supervisors tasked with ensuring firms meet obligations designed to help deter and detect money laundering and terrorist financing (known as anti-money laundering or AML).
The Reserve Bank registers and supervises banks. This section provides information on the prudential oversight of registered banks in New Zealand.
This section provides information on the prudential regulation of non-bank deposit takers (NBDTs) as carried out by the Reserve Bank under the Non-bank Deposit Takers Act 2013.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) undertook a Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) for New Zealand in 2016, with the findings and recommendations released in May 2017. An FSAP is a comprehensive review of a country’s financial system, with a particular focus on the quality of financial sector regulation. The previous New Zealand FSAP was conducted over 2003-04.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has issued current and expired notices.
The Bank’s approach to prudential supervision and regulatory policy-making are described in the Statements of policy-making, supervisory and enforcement approaches.
The Reserve Bank has now completed its stocktake of the prudential requirements for banks and non-bank deposit takers (NBDTs). The objective of the stocktake was to identify ways to improve the efficiency, clarity, and consistency of the regulatory requirements in those sectors. This has led to several strands of work to implement improvements identified in the stocktake.