Todd Stephenson: Finance and Expenditure committee member says barriers need to be lowered for foreign banks

Parliament's finance and expenditure committee released the findings of its banking inquiry today, making 19 recommendations - 14 of which have cross-party support. 

It concluded there is no silver bullet for more competition in the sector. 

Committee member Todd Stephenson saysthe first step is reducing barriers to entry. 

He says a large part of that is capital requirements for new players. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Parliament's Banking Inquiry has finally released its report. There's no
silver bullet in it. Recommendations include things already underway, including
the capitalization of Kiwi Bank, but also banks being more
transparent with Farmers Ax Finance spokesperson Todd Stevenson was on
the committee.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey Todd, Hi, Hey, how are you well?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Thanks mate. Now none of this is actually going to
massively change the game competition wise, is it.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Look No, as you said, there's no silver bullet. I
never we never really thought nackted there would be. But look,
there are some things that do need to be addressed.
And look, I think the bank inquiries had some success already, Heather.
You mentioned Reserve Banks already looking at its capital requirements.
They announced that during this inquiry, which I think is
quite interesting. I think they could see what.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Was said, come on now. That was because Nikola was
giving them the hard word in the meetings.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Ah. Look, no, people were turning up at the Select
Committee saying it was a real problem, and I think
they saw where it was going to hit you. I
mean the other one too is open banking, with some
progress has been made on that too during the of
course the inquiry.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Why do you say that there is no silver bullet
do you think do you think there is no competition problem.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
No, there's definitely a competition problem. I agree with that.
It's just that you've got to do a number of
things to actually increase that competition. And you mentioned rural banking.
I mean, well, I think looking at the capital requirements
and making sure that they are appropriate and we can
actually get new players into New Zealand, whether they're local
or overseas, that's definitely an area that needs focus, and

(01:25):
that's around capital requirements, around the other rules, and just
making sure it's actually entered easier to enter the New
Zealand market.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah. Do you reckon Farmer is going to be stoked
with your recommendations. I think they might be.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Look, you know, my colleague Mark Cameron was relentless at
questioning what was going on around particularly rural lending. Some
things obviously have come out about the different kind of
risks and interest rates that rural customers are forced to
kind of deal with, and so yeah, I think we're
going to see some progress there, Tod.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Thanks for your time, mate, Todd Stevenson, member of the
Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
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