Bank misconduct condensed into one metric
The new and popular Bank Financial Strength Dashboard of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand may be extended to include "conduct" metrics, Toby Fiennes, head of prudential supervision, told an accounting forum last week."In the wake of the recent Australian Financial Services Royal Commission's interim report, there is much focus on misconduct and fair treatment of customers [and] we would welcome ideas" on conduct metrics, Fiennes said."What, for example, would be a minimum or standard benchmark and how should one define and source the information?"The RBNZ's Dashboard, Fiennes explained, launched on 29 May."We received a lot of positive feedback on the ease of use of the Dashboard from many sources including financial journalists, academics, and a number of government agencies."Early usage statistics were positive. The Dashboard received more visits in its first 24 hours than its predecessor (the G1 table) typically receives in an entire year. The vast majority of these visits are from New Zealanders. "An interesting observation is that about 15 per cent of users to date are return visitors."We have had good engagement from "academics, rating agencies, specialist financial journalists. Some have asked for less static data, and for us to introduce scenario analysis. "For example, stress test results may contain useful information for the riskiness of individual banks. "We plan to review the case for making individual bank results publicly available alongside the next stress test, building on the steps we have already taken to increase the granularity of stress test reporting."?