The FMA Wants Advisers to Innovate. Here's What That Means.

At this week’s Financial Advice New Zealand conference in Auckland, FMA Chief Executive Samantha Barrass delivered a message that caught the attention of every adviser in the room: stop holding back.

The FMA has spent the past year reviewing access to financial advice in New Zealand. They interviewed 80 stakeholders, surveyed 1,000 consumers through IPSOS, and reviewed practices across the sector. The findings were published alongside the speech in two reports: Access to Financial Advice: Challenges and Opportunities for the Financial Advice Sector and Access to Financial Advice: Consumer Research Findings. Together they paint a picture of an industry that has the trust of consumers but is not reaching enough of them.

What stood out was not the data. It was the directness. The head of the regulator stood in front of the profession and said: if you are restricting how you deliver advice because you are worried about us, pick up the phone.

Only 1 in 3 New Zealanders Sought Advice Last Year

The consumer research found that 28% of New Zealanders aged 18 and over accessed financial advice in the past 12 months. The top three categories were KiwiSaver (23%), mortgage broking (22%), and banking (21%).

That means roughly two out of three adults made financial decisions without professional guidance. Of those who had not sought advice, 23% indicated they had not spoken to anyone or looked for any advice at all, and 26% said they did not know where to start. For a profession with over 9,000 active advisers (an 8% increase on the prior year), the gap between supply and demand is not about capacity. It is about reach.

One finding that may surprise: more people in younger demographics said they had used a financial adviser in the past year than people aged over 60. The assumption that younger people are harder to engage does not hold up in the data.

The Nature and Scope Problem

The FMA identified a pattern that will be familiar to many practices. Faced with uncertainty about how to tailor the nature and scope of financial advice under the principles-based regime, the default response has been to apply the full six-step advice process to every client interaction.

This is understandable. When you are uncertain about where the boundaries are, being thorough feels safer than being efficient. But the FMA’s concern is clear: this approach is making advice less accessible, not more.

From the sector report:

Perceptions of regulatory risk led to a default towards broader scoped advice, even where a more appropriate scope might be sufficient. As a result, some financial advisers were uncomfortable designing new advice journeys, due to uncertainty about how to meet their conduct obligations in practice.

The regime is designed to allow flexibility and proportionality. A KiwiSaver fund review for a 25-year-old with $8,000 does not require the same process as a comprehensive retirement plan for a client with $500,000 across multiple assets. Both are valid advice. Both are compliant. But if every engagement requires the same documentation, the same disclosure process, and the same time investment, the economics do not work for the simpler case.

The FMA’s report included practical examples of right-sized advice. One example: a mortgage adviser giving limited KiwiSaver fund advice during a first-home purchase, scoped to the specific aspect of the client’s circumstances without requiring a full risk-appetite and retirement planning exercise.

The Innovation Signal

This is where the speech shifted from observation to invitation. Barrass was explicit:

We encourage you to innovate and think differently, to introduce new advice journeys that tap into consumer groups who are currently underserved. We want more people to get access to financial advice, to use your services.

And then the line that had advisers turning to each other in the audience:

An approach where you are restricting access because you’re worried about the FMA — that is not the outcome we are seeking in any way, shape or form. If you think you are having to do this, pick up the phone, talk to the team.

This is not the language of a regulator looking for reasons to censure. It is a direct signal that the FMA wants the profession to experiment with how advice is delivered, to whom, and through what channels. In conversations after the session, several advisers I spoke with said it was the clearest permission to innovate they had heard from the FMA since the new regime launched in 2021.

Technology and Hybrid Models

The FMA’s review found strong provider interest in using technology, including AI, to improve access to financial advice, particularly in investment advice. But it also found that advisers want support in understanding how technology fits within compliance frameworks.

The consumer research adds an important nuance: four out of five New Zealanders still want face-to-face conversations when thinking about financial advice. They want digital accessibility and human connection. This points toward hybrid models rather than fully automated advice.

The FMA used specific language that should resonate with any practice thinking about its technology stack:

Technology-enabled and hybrid advice models can expand access and serve more people, particularly those currently missing out.

For KiwiSaver advice specifically, this is directly relevant. A digital questionnaire that captures client information, generates a risk profile, and produces a recommendation for adviser review is exactly the kind of right-sized, technology-enabled advice journey the FMA is describing.

The Retirement Opportunity

One statistic from the speech deserves attention from every KiwiSaver adviser. There are currently just over 100,000 people aged 65 and older in KiwiSaver. Another 200,000 will reach retirement eligibility in the next few years. More than half of consumers surveyed recognised that financial advisers can help with retirement planning.

These are people who will need to decide what to do with their KiwiSaver savings at retirement. Stay invested? Withdraw partially? Switch to a more conservative fund? The decumulation phase is complex, and the FMA identified a specific advice gap here, calling it out as one of the key challenges in the sector report.

For practices that advise on KiwiSaver, this is a significant pipeline of clients who will actively need guidance. The question is whether the profession is set up to reach them efficiently.

What This Means for Your Practice

The FMA has laid out a clear direction. The profession is trusted. More than half of consumers base their trust in financial advisers on whether they are licensed or officially regulated. The demand is there. The regime allows flexibility. The barrier is confidence in how to use that flexibility.

Practices that take up the invitation will likely focus on three things:

Right-sizing the advice process. Not every client needs the full six-step journey. Build streamlined processes for common, lower-complexity scenarios like KiwiSaver fund selection. Document your nature and scope clearly, and engage with the FMA if you are uncertain about boundaries. They have explicitly asked you to.

Adopting technology that supports compliance. The FMA is not asking advisers to choose between technology and human advice. They are asking for both. Tools that handle the structured parts of the process (questionnaires, risk profiling, SOA generation, and disclosure tracking) free advisers to focus on the relationship and judgement that clients value.

Proactive outreach to underserved groups. Two-thirds of New Zealanders did not seek financial advice last year. Many of them would benefit from it. The question is not whether the demand exists, but whether the profession can serve it at a price point and in a format that works for both sides.

The FMA has said they plan to continue this conversation through targeted roundtables with FAPs, professional bodies, insurers, fintech providers, and consumer groups in the coming months. For practices exploring how to build new advice journeys, the regulator is not just permitting innovation. They are asking for it.

This article is based on the FMA’s Access to Financial Advice: Challenges and Opportunities for the Financial Advice Sector (PDF), the Access to Financial Advice: Consumer Research Findings (PDF), both published March 2026, and the FMA CEO’s address to the Financial Advice NZ Conference 2026 in Auckland. Nuvano is a technology provider and does not provide financial advice. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or personalised financial advice. It does not take into account your individual circumstances. If you require advice, consult a licensed Financial Advice Provider.