The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has extended reporting dates again for entities under its aegis after providing an initial two-month relief period in March.
In a release late on Friday, the FMA said: “… all Financial Markets Conduct Act reporting entities with balance dates up to and including 31 July will also have a further 2 months to provide audited financial statements, if their ability to produce financial statements is legitimately impacted by COVID19.”
“This extends the current relief from balance dates up to 31 May,” the regulator said. “We will continue to assess the situation for later balance dates.”
The FMA move coincides with a NZX waiver to push out reporting deadlines for “equity, debt and fund issuers with 30 June 2020 and 31 July 2020 balance dates”.
Following the updated NZX relief, equity and debt issuers would have a further 30 days “to prepare and release results announcements (including preliminary full year financial statements)” on top of previously-announced extensions.
“Equity, debt and fund issuers would have up to an additional two months to prepare and release annual reports,” the NZX statement says.
Last week the Financial Services Council (FSC) laid out the revised timetable for nine pending legislative and regulatory changes. The FSC update reveals tenders for KiwiSaver default status under the new conditions released in February have been postponed until later this year.
Furthermore, the current KiwiSaver default schemes have been granted a five-month stay of execution with the expiry date moving from June 30 next year to November 30.
Other regulatory deadlines have been extended from up to a year (for bank capital adequacy changes) to a matter of months for feedback on draft legislation including the financial institution conduct bill, the Fair Trading Act amendment and the Insurance Prudential Supervision Act review.
As reported earlier, the new financial advisory regime state date – originally set for June 29 this year – under the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Act (FSLAA) has also been delayed until “March 2021 at least”, according to the FSC.
But the regulatory revolution is gathering pace, regardless.
At the end of March, NZX chair, James Miller, also announced a “ground-breaking” plan to separate the company’s commercial and regulatory functions.
Miller said the restructure – due for implementation this calendar year – would create a “wholly-owned operating subsidiary of the Exchange… [to] perform all frontline regulatory functions in support of NZX’s obligations as a market operator and as operator of the designated settlement system”.
The NZX formed an establishment board chaired by Trevor Janes, and featuring Elaine Campbell and Mike Heron as directors – with a fourth member to be named shortly.
In its release, the NZX says the planned regulatory arm would “not be expected to generate profit for the Exchange”.
March NZX data published last week also shows the local bourse saw a record trading month with total equity transactions of over 1.1 million and $6.3 billion equating to year-on-year increases of close to 300 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively.
Meanwhile, NZX funds under management (FUM) as at March 31 topped $3.4 billion, or up almost 7 per cent over the 12-month period.
Most of the NZX FUM growth, however, came by way of external investors in Smartshares exchange-traded funds (ETFs) rather than via its in-house SuperLife schemes.
According to the NZX data, SuperLife total FUM of $2.25 billion was virtually flat year-on-year as a slight increase in the KiwiSaver scheme (1.5 per cent) balanced against a 1.1 per cent fall in its traditional super fund products.
During the same period, Smartshares external FUM grew almost 23 per cent to more than $1.1 billion as the in-house SuperLife-sourced ETF rose 4.1 per cent to just under $1.9 billion.
The NZX Wealth Technologies platform reported funds under administration of almost $2.2 billion at March 31, up 7 per cent for the 12 months.
In March, Smartshares also lent $226 million of stock through its amended securities lending service.
“Due to changes in custodian, Smartshares is no longer offering securities through the NZX Clearing centralised clearing book and is now lending exclusively through its own stock lending programme,” the report says.
The NZX funds business recently consolidated custody under BNP Paribas, replacing JB Were in some of the original Smartshares products.