The CEO of a major bank whose attitude towards open banking was deemed uncooperative recently met with Commerce Commission officials to successfully resolve differences, Commission Chairman John Small says.
Appearing before Parliament's Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee on Tuesday afternoon, Small was asked by Labour's Manurewa MP Arena Williams about the big four banks' open banking progress and whether the Commission wanted more oversight of this.
Small noted the Commission has a role overseeing aspects of banking via the Retail Payment System Act, on top of its recently completed market study on personal banking services.
"We've been guiding and leading and cajoling the [banking] industry wearing that [payments] hat for a couple of years, [and] more actively in the last 12 months. And then through the banking study as well," Small said.
"We do see ourselves as just sticking with it and setting expectations."
"One of the other commissioners and myself had a meeting with one of the big bank CEOs 10 days ago. We wrote to them because we considered them recalcitrant in several ways. And the CEO came in, we had a cordial discussion, and resolved things that way," said Small.
"So it's not all about the big stick and taking people to court. Often you can get a really good result more quickly in other ways."
Interest.co.nz has asked the Commission which bank and which fellow commissioner Small was referring to.
Payments NZ, the bank owned company overseeing the open banking rollout, announced in late November the big four banks would meet the deadline for a second key open banking standard, enabling banks, fintechs and third parties to offer a wider range of open banking products and services.
"ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac were required to make the Payments NZ API Centre’s Account Information API [application programming interface] standard available by tomorrow (30 November), under an open banking implementation plan agreed in May 2023," Payments NZ said on November 29.
"ANZ, ASB and BNZ have already delivered the standard, with Westpac also confirming they are on track to meet tomorrow’s milestone."
More broadly on banking Small said there was still a lot to do in terms of "market study aftercare," with "a bit of momentum underway in that sector."
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said in August the Government would act on all 14 recommendations in the Commerce Commission’s final report into competition for personal banking services. There's also now a parliamentary banking competition inquiry underway. It's being undertaken by the finance and expenditure and primary production select committees.
*There's more from Small in this episode of our Of Interest podcast recorded after the final market study report was released.
*This article was first published in our email for paying subscribers. See here for more details and how to subscribe.
4 Comments
Another commenter on Interest pointed out Kiwibank as being laggards within the last week. That's another, not AN Other.
As written in the article above:
Payments NZ, the bank owned company overseeing the open banking rollout, announced in late November the big four banks would meet the deadline for a second key open banking standard, enabling banks, fintechs and third parties to offer a wider range of open banking products and services.
So Kiwibank is not one of the big four (they're not big but still major).
hmm but the article also says:
"One of the other commissioners and myself had a meeting with one of the big bank CEOs 10 days ago. We wrote to them because we considered them recalcitrant in several ways. And the CEO came in, we had a cordial discussion, and resolved things that way," said Small."
Confusion not helped by the guys name being 'Small' - hahaha
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