The Country 26/08/25: Richard McIntyre and Mark Hooper talk to Jamie Mackay

Federated Farmers' banking spokesmen - past and present - say the Reserve Bank’s decision to review bank capital rules is the first step towards lower interest rates and fairer access to finance for farmers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This was a good news story from yesterday and Federated
Farmers immediately jumped on it. They've done a great job
on this one, they say. The Reserve Bank's decision to
review bank capital rules is the first step towards lower
interest rates and fairer access to finance for farmers. So
what I've done today is I've kind of peered up
a bit of a panel the Fed Farmers banking spokespersons

(00:24):
past and present. I'll start with the past. Yesterday's man,
not really because Richard McIntyre man or two Kalcocky, you
did a great job kicking this off for FEDS. You
must have been pleased with that announcement.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh look, Jamie in good afternoon. But there are a
few pumps in our house when the announcer was made
yesterday around the reserve based capital requirements. This is going
to be actually huge for farmers, you know. And FEDS
have fought incredibly hard for the last couple of years.
Yet all of this over the line, and yeah, you know,
we think this will see farmers tends it out. All
was a year, so it's pretty cheap for an eight
hundred dollar FEDS membership.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I have to say whose bright idea was it to
set the cap little holding rules so that you could
withstand a one in two hundred year shock or event.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well that was our old mate, Adrian all you know,
obviously just really loved being incredibly conservative and having an
incredibly resentent financial system in New Zealand. And look that's
all well and good, but it's been a huge drag
on the economy and a huge drag on farmers businesses.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well he wasn't that conservative when it came to employing
people and paying them huge amounts of money and giving
them a whole lot of time off at the Reserve Bank.
But Adrian is truly yesterday's man, Okay, the new bloke
at Federated Farmers. He's also a colcocky Richard mcintize in
Manor or two up the road a bit. We've got
Mark Hooper and Taranak Marky going to claim the credit

(01:46):
for Richard's good work here.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I think that would be be a bit presumptuous
of me. I think a lot of cute oster Richard
for the hard work that went on this So really
got to acknowledge knowledge of the work that's gone on
ahead of me.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
You reckon and I heard Luxeon talking to Hoskin yesterday morning.
I was surprised he front footed it as much as
he did in terms of getting into the air of
the Reserve Bank governor in this case acting governor, because
they're meant to be a standalone entity. But you know,
there's a bit of heat coming on the Reserve Bank deservedly.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
So yeah, yeah, look, I think so. And obviously, you know,
this was one of the key requirement, key recommendations that
came out of the recent banking inquiry from the Financial
and Expenditure Select Committee, where in there they were calling
for immediate halt to the increase capital reserves that the

(02:45):
banks had to put in place. And then the announcement
yesterday was that the Reserve Bank going to consultation on
this to determine whether the levels are appropriate or not.
And I think it kind of speaks for itself to
some extent, was affirmed by the inquiry some of the
numbers that had been prepared before that that this is

(03:07):
potentially costing anywhere between half a billion to three quarters
of a billion dollars to the economy in terms of
additional costs on farm, small medium enterprise businesses.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Absolutely agree with you, Richard McIntyre. You can buy a
house okay in Auckland with ten or twenty percent equity,
you certainly can't buy a farm with that sort of
equity percentage. We're seeing housing prices and Auckland drop, for instance,
farm prices are going up. I know this is simplifying things,

(03:41):
but why shouldn't farmers get the same rate as residential borrowers.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, that's been one of the questions that we really
wanted to get to the bottom of an inquiry jam.
It just hasn't made sense a lot of it. You know,
we're told that arms are riskier, but then you know,
they've really justify so much of the treatment around that.
You know, the fact that you can be a new
graduate with you know, ten or fifteen percent deposits, you know,

(04:07):
just started the workforce and you consider to be less
risky than a farmer with ninety percent an incredibly good
cash flow, just you know, is bizarre. So, you know,
one of the things that we've wanted to get to
the bottom of it. Hopefully the Reserve Bank with the
Able Requirement Review will actually come up with some better
way of working out risk and capital requirements around that.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, Richard, you've done a great job leading the fight
and the past life for Federated Farmers. Mark Hooper has
now picked up the ball and run with it. Okay,
hopefully you might have this one sorted Mark, What are
you going to do about overdraft rates?

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah? Well that's been interesting because we've sort of looked
for that information and our six monthly banking surveys and
and you know, I think I think where she talked
about this previously, didn't we that we put out those
report cards from our last survey, and the a report
cards on the banks were scored on six criteria, one

(05:03):
of them dean of course, overdraft interest rates. So we've
been proactive and engaging with the banks around that and
talking about, you know, the impact across the board in
terms of their mortgage rates, their interest rates, and overall
satisfaction primarily from customers, and hopefully providing a little bit

(05:25):
of constructive feedback that can be drawn.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
On Richard McIntyre, Mark Cooper, banking spokespersons past and present
for Federated Farmers. You bang on eight hundred dollars well
spent on a Federated Farmer's soub got to go. Thanks
for your time, good luck with the rest of carving.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Cheers, thank you, thanks Jmy,