The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) – Te Mana Tātai Hokohoko – has published its 2025/26 Statement of Performance Expectations (SPE), outlining its regulatory goals and metrics for the upcoming financial year.
The document is intended to support strategic outcomes identified in the FMA’s 2024–2028 Statement of Intent and will guide the authority’s oversight of financial markets, including insurance providers.
The SPE details how the FMA will monitor the effectiveness of its operations across investigation, licensing, supervision, and stakeholder engagement. It also includes projected financial statements and identifies performance indicators aimed at improving transparency and accountability in its regulatory approach.
A central measure in the SPE focuses on how financial service providers and consumers view the FMA’s role in promoting fair, efficient, and transparent markets.
Survey-based indicators are used to assess stakeholder sentiment, with 90% of industry participants expected to affirm that FMA actions support higher conduct standards, and 75% of consumers expected to express confidence in market oversight.
These annual indicators serve as a proxy for assessing how well the FMA meets its statutory purpose, with results used to evaluate trends in regulatory effectiveness.
The enforcement category includes performance goals for concluding investigations and conducting post-case reviews.
For the coming year, the FMA aims to complete 70% of Category A cases within 24 months and Category B cases within 18 months.
Post-investigation reviews are expected to meet quality criteria in 90% of cases, reflecting a focus on both efficiency and consistency.
Additionally, the FMA is targeting a nine-working-day turnaround for decisions on initial misconduct case actions in 85% of instances.
In its licensing and compliance role, the FMA will measure processing efficiency. Fully completed licence applications are to be processed within 60 working days, with a 100% target. For individual exemption applications, the processing target is 85% within 30 working days.
A new measure has been introduced to assess stakeholder satisfaction with licensing systems, with a 70% agreement target based on the annual Ease of Doing Business survey.
The FMA plans to continue expanding its outreach activities, targeting 40 presentations, seminars, or speeches. It also aims to increase its digital reach by 5% compared to the previous year.
Other performance metrics include perceived clarity and usefulness of FMA communications, as rated by stakeholders.
New qualitative measures will assess the perceived benefit of stakeholder engagement and the utility of regulatory guidance provided by the FMA.
Crown funding for the FMA will increase to $77.9 million for the 2025/26 year, reflecting additional responsibilities. This includes final-year funding to support implementation of the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) regime and an anticipated role in administering the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), pending legislative approval.
The transfer of CCCFA oversight from the Commerce Commission to the FMA is tentatively scheduled for early 2026, with operational planning already underway.
The FMA has flagged litigation funding as a pressure area, with expenditure expected to exceed the annual $5 million allocation.
Discussions with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) are ongoing to address the potential funding shortfall.
Without additional funding, the FMA may be limited in its ability to pursue or initiate enforcement actions.
The authority is also undergoing a shift toward cloud-based systems, with its current customer relationship management platform under review.
Costs associated with this transition are being evaluated to determine whether they qualify as capital investments under accounting standards.
The SPE complements the FMA’s newly introduced Financial Conduct Report, which sets regulatory expectations for institutions across the financial sector, including insurers, and outlines conduct risks and supervisory themes for the year ahead.
