[unable to retrieve full-text content]In remarks for a Monetary Policy Statement presentation to the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce today, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr has elaborated on the direction received from the Minister of Finance, to have regard to house price sustainability when making its financial stability policy decisions.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua welcomes the direction it has received today from the Minister of Finance. The Bank is tasked with considering how it can contribute to the Government’s housing policy objectives, consistent with its financial stability objective of promoting a sound and efficient financial system.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Monetary Policy Committee agreed to maintain the current stimulatory level of monetary settings in order to meet its consumer price inflation and employment remit. The Committee will keep the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 0.25 percent, and the Large Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) Programme of up to $100 billion and the Funding for Lending Programme (FLP) operation unchanged.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua is making solid progress in responding to a recent malicious data breach, and ensuring affected stakeholders are well supported.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua is putting in place more stringent loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions to reduce the risks to financial stability caused by high-risk mortgage lending. The LVR restrictions do not apply to new residential construction.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua has released the Terms of Reference for an independent KPMG review of Bank processes following the malicious illegal breach of a third-party file sharing application.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Ka nui te āhua matahuhua o te ōhanga Maori, waihoki he maha hoki ngā whāinga wāhi e tupu tonu ai ia ki tōna tino teitei, e ai ki ngā kitenga a tētahi pūrongo nā Te Pūtea Mātua The Reserve Bank of New Zealand rāua ko tana hoa kōtui, a Business and Economic Research Ltd (BERL).

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua investigation into the malicious illegal breach of a third-party file sharing application has significantly progressed.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Adrian Orr, says the recent malicious and illegal breach of a file sharing application used by the Bank is significant, and has our full attention.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua continues to respond with urgency to a breach of a third party file sharing service used to share information with external stakeholders.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua is responding with urgency to a breach of one of its data systems.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua has acted swiftly and with confidence to tackle the economic challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, and is well placed to address longer term challenges and risks, the Bank states in its Briefing for Finance Minister Hon. Grant Robertson.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua – has this morning published its detailed response to the letter from the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson sent on 24 November 2020

Release date
10 December 2020

The annual re-weighting of the Trade-Weighted Index (TWI) takes effect on Friday 11 December 2020.
The TWI is a measure of the value of the New Zealand dollar relative to the currencies of New Zealand’s major trading partners. There are 17 currencies included in the TWI and each currency is weighted using the country’s two-way goods and services trade with New Zealand.
The new weights will be applied going forward. The historical calculations of the TWI are not backdated with the new weights. The current TWI weights and those that will apply for the next 12 months are:

Currency
Symbol
Old weight
New weight

Chinese yuan

CNY

Release date
09 December 2020

The Reserve Bank today announced the 2022 dates for releasing its quarterly Monetary Policy Statement (MPS), Monetary Policy Review (MPR) decisions and the six-monthly Financial Stability Report. This covers the period from February to July 2022.
The release dates for 2021 remain unchanged.
Announcements will be made as usual at 2pm for MPS and MPR reviews, and at 9am for FSRs on the dates listed below. These will be published on the Reserve Bank’s website.
Media conferences will be held following the release of each MPS at 3pm and FSR at 11am. They will be live-streamed on the Reserve Bank’s website.
Market implementation of the OCR will continue to be the working day after the monetary policy announcement.
The Reserve Bank

Release date
08 December 2020

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand- Te Pūtea Matua is seeking views on its plan to reinstate loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions on high-risk lending with effect from 1 March 2021.
LVR restrictions are used to reduce the risks to financial stability caused by higher-risk lending. The restrictions were removed in April to best ensure credit could flow and avoid an adverse impact on the mortgage deferral scheme implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor and General Manager of Financial Stability Geoff Bascand says.
“LVR restrictions were first introduced by the Reserve Bank in 2013 and have been adjusted several times since then. When LVR restrictions were removed in April, we said they would

Release date
03 December 2020

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua has today issued formal directions to Pacific International Insurance Pty Limited following repeated failings with its regulatory reporting.
The directions were made under section 143 of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act 2010. Section 143 gives the Reserve Bank the ability to direct a licensed insurer to carry on its business in a specified way and/or take certain specified actions to address regulatory failures. This action follows warnings issued to Pacific International in 2018 for failing to include its solvency ratio in its New Zealand branch financial statements for three consecutive years.
“Pacific International Insurance has a poor history of compliance with its

Release date
02 December 2020

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand in responding to the COVID-19 crisis was well served by its legislative mandate and operational independence, said Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr, when delivering the Sir Leslie Melville Lecture, organised by The Australian National University in Canberra.
In his speech Mr Orr discussed how the Reserve Bank’s monetary and financial policy decisions supported the economy during the economic shock from COVID-19.
“The Bank was able to act swiftly and with confidence, as a team we could focus on our mandate of low and stable consumer price inflation, contributing to maximum sustainable employment, and promoting financial soundness.  We are confident our work has been welfare enhancing.”
In the

Release date
30 November 2020

The Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua is today launching dual consultations on the scope of the Insurance Prudential Supervision Act (IPSA) 2010 and associated Insurer Solvency Standards.
Prudential regulation of insurers aims to ensure that insurance companies understand and manage their risks well so that the public can have confidence in the insurance sector and the sector can remain sound and efficient. These consultations provide the opportunity for people to shape parts of the regime to ensure it is modern, efficient and fit-for-purpose.
Two consultation papers are open for feedback from today. These are part of a number of consultations which will cover different aspects of New Zealand’s insurance regulation as part of the

Release date
30 November 2020

Transactions are now flowing through the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Exchange Settlement Account System (ESAS) after an outage this morning. The Reserve Bank is now looking into the cause of the outage.
ESAS allows individual transactions between financial institutions to be settled electronically as the transactions happen.
The system was offline for approximately three hours which meant that wholesale and retails transactions were unable to be processed between banks. While transactions are now flowing there is a backlog to process.
Christian Hawkesby, Assistant Governor General Manager, Economics, Financial Markets and Banking Group said, “While the system is back online we are continuing to work with ESAS users to keep them

Release date
25 November 2020

Tēnā koutou katoa, welcome all.
The Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua has used its monetary policy and regulatory tools in unison to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 to achieve the best outcomes for the economy and financial stability.
“Ongoing containment of COVID-19, and significant fiscal and monetary support, have ensured that the New Zealand economy has been relatively resilient to the economic shock from the pandemic so far,” Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr says in releasing the November Financial Stability Report.
“The relatively resilient economic outturn means that the New Zealand financial system has not been tested as severely as it could have been. The banking system has maintained strong buffers of capital and

Release date
24 November 2020

The Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua has responded to the letter from Hon Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance sent on 24 November 2020.
A copy of the letter is available on our website.
More information:
Media contact:
Oliver BatesManager, External StakeholdersDDI: +64 4 474 8627Email: [email protected]

Release date
20 November 2020

At the South Pacific Central Bank Governors’ Meeting on 17-18 November 2020, the South Pacific Governors agreed that access to cost-effective remittances remains a high priority focus for the region.
A key focus has been their collective effort to develop a regional ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) facility. The central banks, with support from the International Monetary Fund and other international agencies, have successfully completed an initial phase of work on a KYC facility for the South Pacific region. 
Simeon Malachi Athy, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu and host of the Meeting, said, “The intention of the facility is to improve customer due diligence processes and Anti-Money Laundering / Countering Financing of

Release date
18 November 2020

The Reserve Bank has engaged Deloitte to independently review internal processes, after information was accidentally disclosed to a small group of financial services firms a short time before it was made public in the November Monetary Policy Statement (MPS).
The accidental disclosure was included in a letter sent to non-bank financial institutions to finalise a consultation process. The letter confirmed the Reserve Bank’s decision to introduce a Funding for Lending Programme (FLP), but did not contain specifics of the FLP. The information should not have been communicated until after the 2pm release, but was sent 45 minutes early.
The limited information contained in the letter is unlikely to have provided anyone with a market

Release date
17 November 2020

The Reserve Bank is launching a consultation on the details for implementing the final Capital Review decisions announced last December.
In December 2019 the Reserve Bank made decisions to gradually raise bank capital requirements to make the banking system safer. These increases were meant to start in 2020, but have been delayed to allow banks continued headroom to respond to the economic shock of COVID-19. Increases in the required level of capital will commence from 1 July 2022. Other Capital Review decisions are due to be implemented from 1 July 2021 onwards.
“The Reserve Bank has adjusted implementation plans and is today publishing consultation material on the detailed rules to provide certainty and clarity to industry and

Tēnā koutou katoa, welcome all.
The Monetary Policy Committee agreed to provide additional monetary stimulus to the economy in order to meet its consumer price inflation and employment remit. The Committee agreed that the additional stimulus would be provided through a Funding for Lending Programme (FLP), commencing in December. The FLP will reduce banks’ funding costs and lower interest rates.
The Committee will also continue with the Large Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) Programme up to $100 billion, and retain the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 0.25 percent in accordance with the guidance issued on 16 March.
Progress has been made on the Bank’s operational ability to deploy an FLP and a negative OCR. The Committee agreed that these instruments can be mutually supportive in bolstering economic

Release date
11 November 2020

Reserve Bank delays start date for increases in bank capital
The Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua is further delaying the start of increases in bank capital until 2022 to allow banks continued headroom to respond to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to support the economic recovery.
This delay supports other actions the Reserve Bank has taken to cushion the initial economic blow of COVID-19 by promoting cash flow and confidence in the financial system.
“The Reserve Bank’s actions throughout this period have promoted monetary and financial stability and provided broad support to the Government, financial institutions and New Zealanders,” Reserve Bank Deputy Governor and General Manager Financial Stability Geoff Bascand says.

Release date
03 November 2020

Op-ed from Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr
2020 is a year none of us will forget. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity has had to face mortality and work together to control a disease that relies on social interaction to spread.
This need for cohesion draws eerie parallels to our continued global struggles with controlling our impact on the environment. Early warnings; conflicting messages; politicisation of the science – the writing has also been on the wall but climate change is a slower moving beast. As The Economist put it, COVID-19 is climate change on fast-forward.1
As New Zealand’s Reserve Bank, we at Te Pūtea Matua are spending an increasing amount of time considering how external environmental challenges will

Release date
30 October 2020

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua has signed the ‘IBOR Fallbacks Protocol’ published by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA).
As a market participant, this is an important step for the Bank to support an effective and efficient transition away from LIBOR and other key interbank offer rates (IBORs) by the end of 2021.
ISDA recently released new documentation that will help ease the transition from IBORs to alternative risk-free rates.
The purpose of ISDA’s Protocol and associated Supplement to the 2006 ISDA Definitions is to implement robust fall-back provisions for derivative contracts referencing IBORs – including LIBOR.
Christian Hawkesby Assistant Governor/GM Economics, Financial Markets and

Release date
28 October 2020

Addressing the risks of climate change requires broad transformational change, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr says.
In a speech delivered today at the Pacific Ocean Pacific Climate Conference, Mr Orr reflected on the need for transformational change, as well as a collective and urgent response to climate risks.
“There’s a lot to do and we are late in leaving port. Climate change is a risk that requires a collective response. Grounding a response in our collective knowledge, data and expertise will strengthen and compound the effects of our actions.”
Like many other central banks and regulators, the Reserve Bank sees climate change as a key risk to the financial stability underpinning the economy.
“As New Zealand’s central