A member's bill that would require stressed farmers and rural lenders to undertake independent debt mediation before any receivership process can start has passed its first reading in New Zealand's parliament. The Farm Debt Mediation Bill is the brainchild of coalition government partner New Zealand First, which says "farmers deserve a hand up during tough times". The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has been forced to evacuate its Wellington offices after asbestos was discovered in the building. Governor Adrian Orr said the building would be closed until it was confirmed there was "no risk to human health". Today is Budget day in New Zealand. Orr said essential operations would occur out of the RBNZ's Auckland offices. The chances of New Zealand's financial sector avoiding its own royal commission into misconduct may have diminished after a new report from the Financial Markets Authority, again sounding the alarm over commissions for financial advisers. The report found that in the two years to March 2017, the major life and health insurers (including AMP) spent nine per cent of their new product sales revenue (a total of NZ$34 million) on treats for advisers. These were on top of monetary commissions, and included trips, event tickets and gifts. The average amount spent on trips per adviser was NZ$22,000. The FMA described the targets set for advisers to receive these "soft commissions" as the drivers of poor conduct in the sector. The clean out of BNZ's executive team continues, with the departure announced of the bank's director of products and technology, David Bullock, and the director of customer fulfilment, Martin Gaskell. Both will leave at the end of June. They follow Richard Griffiths, director of transformation and enterprise performance, and David Maloney, director of strategy and planning, out the door. Replacements have yet to be announced. CBA has teamed up with Microsoft and KPMG to launch a business management platform for SMEs, reports Finextra. The cloud based platform, known as Wiise, will launch in July and operate as a standalone venture out of the Stone & Chalk fintech lab in Sydney. It will integrate CBA's invoicing platform and banking data feeds, and will allow users to find out about, and even apply for, business banking products. CBA said it would be targeted at SMEs which had outgrown off-the-shelf accounting and book keeping tools.