Mentis doesn't think a Royal Commission is required in New Zealand: "I don't think there is a need for one in New Zealand".
She, like David Hisco at ANZ, said New Zealand has a different regulatory environment to Australia and says the bank is "well-regulated" and has "open and constructive relationships" with organisations like the FMA, Commerce Commission and Reserve Bank.
One example she uses is the existence of Authorised Financial Advisers. "We have Authorised Financial Advisers in New Zealand. We have 50 AFAs. of them in BNZ. They are on a balanced scorecard. They are on base salary and incentive not commission based."
The AFAs are regulated by both the bank and the FMA.
She says AFAs use third party products as BNZ is not an asset manager. "Their scorecard is agnostic to product. It is is about revenue, and compliance. It is about customer outcomes."
"We don't have a vertically integrated model here in BNZ.
"We don't own brokers or aggregators so we don't the introducer issue."
"I believe, from what I have seen here, we are not seeing the systemic behaviours which are being revealed in Australia."
BNZ is not complacent, she says. Rather it is "ruthlessly vigilant" around what is happening not just in Australia but in other jurisdictions: "We're not complacent, we're listening to the learnings."
One example she uses is the Sedgewick report which was produced in Australia last year. It addresses issues like good conduct, incentives and rewards. "That report we picked up here and we are almost through implementing it here in New Zealand."
Mentis says the number of complaints which go to the Banking Ombudsmen each year have been reducing.
