State-owned Kiwibank has been instructed to reach out to New Zealand investors about a possible $500 million capital raise to help it better compete against the big four Australian-owned banks.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said this should not be considered an asset sale as the funds raised would stay within the business and the Crown had not approved resale of shares.
After the next election, the Government will consider allowing Kiwibank to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) on the sharemarket, which would give investors a liquidity opportunity.
If an IPO was not approved, there may be an option for those investors to sell their shares back to the Crown at an independently assessed price.
Willis said raising capital on the open market would be the best option for Kiwibank in the medium-term, but it wouldn’t be ready to do that until it has finished its digital transformation project.
The Coalition also lacks a mandate to list Kiwibank on the stock exchange as National campaigned on not selling state-owned assets. Even this capital raise breaches that promise as it involves selling equity to private owners.
However, Willis said an additional $500 million of capital could allow Kiwibank to lend up to an extra $4 billion to businesses or $10 billion to home buyers.
“New Zealand is often seen as the little brother against the Aussies. We’re trying to give that little brother a little bit more muscle to get a fairer deal for Kiwis,” she said.
Competition please
Providing more capital for Kiwibank was one of the recommendations from the Commerce Commission’s market study. Another suggestion was to review regulatory settings to make sure competition wasn’t being throttled.
Willis has also picked up on this idea and asked the Reserve Bank to place a greater emphasis on banking competition with a new Financial Policy Remit and letter of expectations.
The central bank has been asked to review: risk weighting for a range of bank lending, minimum capital thresholds for new entrants, and restrictions on using the word “bank”.
Willis also told the Reserve Bank to expand access to the exchange settlement system before the end of March next year.
'The big banks are on notice'
There could additionally be further action directed at the big banks if the Government does not feel they are giving New Zealanders a fair deal. This means moving quickly on open banking, improving switching services, and allowing greater home loan comparison.
“The big banks are on notice. The Government is explicitly leaving open the possibility of further action if we don’t see enough progress,” Willis said.
The Finance Minister wouldn’t be drawn on what potential punishments could be deployed against the banks, but National Party MPs have raised the spectre of an excess profit tax during the Parliamentary inquiry.
*An earlier version of this story overstated the value of business lending which would be possible with the capital raise.
41 Comments
"The Coalition also lacks a mandate to list Kiwibank on the stock exchange as National campaigned on not selling state-owned assets. Even this capital raise breaches that promise as it involves selling equity to private owners."
That's absolute bullshit, the two things are completely different.
In this example we assume Kiwibank is worth $1 billion.
An asset sale would see the government sell off $500m in shares to the market, realise $500m, and retain 50% ownership.
That is not what is happening.
It is a capital raise, $500m in new shares will be sold, $500m goes into kiwibanks balance sheets growing the company from $1b to $1.5b size, the government would retain 66.6% ownership.
Yes, but it's not an asset sale.
I'd love for New Zealand to be able to give significant capital towards growing kiwibank, but I don't think that's realistic in the current economic environment.
$500m is a lot of money for the government to try to find in it's budget.
I like to remind myself not to let "perfect be the enemy of good", having a locally domiciled bank with greater market share against the aussie banks is good, having it bootstrap itself would be perfect but it's unrealistic, having the government inject capital is also unrealistic, this is the last good option left towards meeting that goal, good is not sending profits offshore.
True, but isn't the reason why people are so against asset sales is due to the change in ownership structure?
Imagine if Kiwibank were worth $500m and they decided to raise $50bn of capital from the private market?
Put into perspective, this extra $500m capital Willis talks about is half the amount of Super we give to pensioners still in work and earning over $100k p.a. We find that in our budget no worries it seems...
For the record, I'm 1000% onboard with New Zealand reinstating the superannuation surcharges, we need them now more than ever.
However the optics of "taking money off hard working older New Zealanders and giving it to prop up a 'failing bank'" isn't something that I can see this government doing, that is exactly how special interest groups like greypower, as well as the opposition with their lapdogs in the media will present this policy on the 6pm news.
In my ideal world we would have surcharges on superannuation, we would also have tax advantages on kiwisaver which would be compulsory with no early withdrawls even for houses, there would be a LVT offset by an income tax free threshold.
its a start but in reality they could do far more --
starting by moving all government business away from Westpac to Kiwibank !
No reason they could not make a significant investment into Kiwibank -- the returns would be there for sure - we know how much Banks make in this country
Tried to move my own finances to Kiwibank every time my main mortgage came up -- but they could never match or even get close to the rates I was offered - but now I am about to be mortgage free have already moved some of my business to Kiwibank -- suspect many others would if a good % of their profits were going back into Government coffers
starting by moving all government business away from Westpac to Kiwibank !
My understanding (probably from reading the comments of learned commenters on Interest.co.nz) is that Kiwibank isn't big enough to handle the government banking needs. "Big" probably being a reference to staff and processing ability (maybe other things too).
One would hope that a capital injection would assist in progressing this move from Westpac to Kiwibank.
I’m all for this. Annoys the hell out me that billions of $ of profit head to Australia every year courtesy of the big banks.
I would like to see Kiwibank scale up and eat into the market share of the Aussie banks.
My only concerns are 1.Ensuring profitability whist expanding 2. Ensuring profitability through differing governments
All a failure of the market regulator.
Competition alone won't solve the problem of money flowing offshore. More lending into nonproductive property ownership will not solve the structural economic flaws. Private investors will still demand their return first, meaning Kiwibank can't be run as a disruptor. The entry of FinTechs still sees capital flowing offshore.
The competition, in theory, already exists. Will the banks bring back core services, that they say they can't afford to offer anymore? Do Kiwi's care about any of this if it's only interest rates that matter?
Private investors who demand dividends, which are taxed, over growth which is not taxed due to our lack of a comprehensive capital gains tax, are short-sighted and that's speaking lightly.
I'm very excited with the prospect of investing into kiwibank as a shareholder, if indeed the government go down this path, I will however be looking for growth, not dividend yield.
Let's use an example above - a 34% share of Kiwibank goes to investors. Over time, those shares end up in the hands of an Aussie bank. All the people who bank with Kiwibank to avoid dividends going overseas have to shift to TSB and get rubbish service.
That's one scenario.
That suggest TSBs service is worse than kiwibanks. If so how the hell are TSB still in business? We have our mortgage with KB, and the reason we didn't move everything over to KB was because of how rubbish the service was when we switched the mortgage over to them. Will be going elsewhere when we refinance in 2026.
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