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Complaints are important to us and help us monitor whether financial markets are working as they should; detect and act on misconduct and gather information to determine where we should direct our attention and priorities. 

Before you get in touch, please read the information below to ensure we are the right agency to help you with your issue. You can also read our Frequently Asked Questions.

If your complaint is about a social media post, please include a screenshot of the post with your complaint as these posts frequently change or may be removed.

Please note all calls are recorded.

We consider all information we receive, but we can't investigate each complaint. 

If you are concerned about the need to protect your identity, please raise it with us when you make your complaint. Read our whistleblowing page for more information below.

You can provide information anonymously, however, this may limit our ability to investigate your complaint. If you can, please give us your contact details.

We investigate a range of complaints about the conduct of individuals and businesses that operate in our financial markets. We may be able to help you if your complaint is about:

Businesses, individuals and markets we license and authorise

We can look into your complaint to see if the financial service provider might have breached a law we enforce.

Illegal investment offers and schemes

We investigate complaints about illegal investment offers. We publish warnings and alerts when we find organisations have made illegal investment offers or operated illegal investment schemes.

You should report other types of scams to the Consumer Protection’s Scamwatch.

New Zealand incorporated 'shell' companies

We investigate complaints about financial service companies and limited partnerships that are incorporated in New Zealand but have no physical presence here. These are also known as ‘shell companies’.

These companies often offer online services such as margin foreign exchange trading and margin commodity trading. Their websites may imply they are regulated by the FMA, but many are not.

Fair dealing

You can complain about misleading or deceptive conduct in relation to financial products or financial services.  See what products and services are covered and how we work with the Commerce Commission on fair dealing matters. 

Unregistered financial service providers

We investigate complaints about people and organisations that are not registered when they should be.

Everyone who provides financial service in New Zealand must be registered for that service. They must also be a member of a dispute resolution scheme if they provide financial services to retail clients. See our FAQs page for more information about dispute resolution schemes and how to check whether a financial service provider is registered.

Misleading advertising about investments

We regulate advertisements of investments but media advertisements must also comply with the Advertising Standards Authority's Code of Practice for Financial Advertising. 

Complaints about the FMA

You can make a complaint to the FMA that is about us rather than about any other organisation, firm or individual.

We will deal with any complaint about the way in which we have carried out, or failed to carry out, our role. This includes complaints about mistakes or lack of care, unreasonable delay, unprofessional behaviour, bias or lack of integrity by us or our staff. See more about how we deal with complaints below.

For information about any other kind of complaint you may have please check our FAQs and what we don't do and who else may be able to help first (below) – it may save you time.  If you can’t find your answer there, please contact us.

We take complaints very seriously so when we receive your complaint, we'll send you an acknowledgement to confirm we have it.

We will record the details you've sent us and decide whether it's a matter that we should take further action on.

How we process each complaint

1. Assess the seriousness of your complaint

We consider all complaints we receive, but we can't investigate each one. In deciding whether to look further into a complaint, we take into account our compliance and enforcement priorities. We also look at whether the issue you have complained about could harm the market as a whole, such as how widespread the conduct appears to be.

2. Decide if we need more information and respond to your request

We will contact you if we need more information. We will acknowledge your complaint within two working days. We will provide an update about your complaint within 10 working days as to whether your complaint has been evaluated for further action, referred to another agency or will be closed.

General enquiries will be acknowledged within two working days, and then receive a response within 20 working days of receiving all relevant information.

3. Take action

If the issue potentially breaks one of the laws we enforce, we'll consider what action we should take. We have a broad range of powers and functions and may take action in a number of ways. Learn more about our enforcement policy.

4. No action

We may decide not to take action at this time, given our regulatory policies and resources. If this is the case, we'll let you know and close your complaint.

We rely on people in the market to help us to maintain market integrity.

We would like to hear from you if you have information about:

• misleading information in disclosure documents such as a prospectus, investment statement or product disclosure statement
• non-payment of money to investors when due
• use of inside information for profit on the sharemarket
• financial advice given by people who are not Authorised Financial Advisers (AFAs)
• financial services provided by people who are not registered
• misleading reporting or non-reporting of relevant information to NZX or to update a prospectus or investment statement
• low-ball share offers
• misleading or deceptive conduct for financial products and services - read more about fair dealing
• any investigations the FMA is conducting

Protecting your identity

We will take all possible steps to protect the identity of anyone who gives us information in good faith

Information provided to us in confidence is protected by the Financial Markets Conduct Act and remains confidential, except where the FMA Act permits its disclosure. If we need to disclose information that may reveal your identity, we will let you know first. The FMA may be legally required to disclose your identity, or disclosure may be necessary to successfully progress an investigation.

You can provide information anonymously, but this may limit our ability to investigate the matter further.

Legal protection

If you make a disclosure to the FMA, in certain cases the law will protect your identity and may protect you from any related legal action, as contained in the following Acts:

• Protected Disclosures Act 2000 (Voluntary disclosures by employees)
• Financial Advisers Act 2008 (Voluntary disclosures by AFAs)
• Financial Markets Supervisors Act 2011
• Securities Act 1978 (Voluntary disclosures by directors of issuers, promoters and experts)
• Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (Disclosures by auditors, supervisors, independent trustees, custodians, investment managers, administration managers or actuaries).

If the law does not provide specific whistleblower protection, we cannot guarantee you immunity from legal action in return for information. However, we will always take into account voluntary disclosures and other forms of cooperation when considering what action is appropriate.

Your request should be as clear and specific as you can possibly make it. Before making a request to us, please check our website first as the information you are looking for could already be publicly available.

You can contact us in the ways noted below to request information:

Email: questions@fma.govt.nz
Post: Financial Markets Authority, PO Box 106 672, Auckland 1143, New Zealand
Telephone: 0800 434 566.

When you make your request please include the following details:

• your name
• your postal address or preferred email address
• specific details of the information you want.

If you make a request by phone, we will confirm acknowledgement in writing or if we need to clarify anything, we may ask you to send your request in writing.

When will I get a response?

Your request will be acknowledged as soon as possible. We will respond to your request within 20 working days from the date we received it. The OIA allows for extensions in certain circumstances. If we require an extension we will contact you to let you know.

Note: Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Queen’s Birthday, Waitangi Day, Labour Day, and any day from 25 December to 15 January inclusive are not working days for the purposes of the Official Information Act, so will not be included within the 20 working day timeframe.  

What it costs?

We may invoice you for the costs of responding to your information request. Charges are for staff time and resources if your request requires considerable labour and materials or requires significant collation and research. These charges are set by the Government and are applied in line with the Ombudsman's charging guide.

We may decide to withhold the information for specific reasons. If this occurs, we will explain the reasons why. For more on why information can be withheld see sections 6, 9 and 18 of the OIA.

Reasons we are sometimes unable to disclose information include our obligations to protect personal privacy under the Privacy Act 2020, and our duty under the Financial Markets Authority Act 2011 (FMA Act) to maintain confidentiality about information supplied or disclosed to, or obtained by, us under the FMA Act and financial markets legislation.

The OIA schedule below summaries how we have responded to the requests we have recieved and whether we have disclosed information.

If you are unhappy with our response, you can make a complaint and have the decision reviewed by the Ombudsman.

More information

The Ombudsman provides a useful guide with tips about how to make an OIA request. It also includes information on the Official Information Act, and what agencies must do when they respond to a request.

We may decide to publish some or all of the information that we disclose in response to an OIA request. You can view the information we've published on the OIA publication schedule below.

The types of information request we would publish are those from news media organisations, businesses (where the requested information benefits other businesses) or individuals and from parliamentary parties.

Exceptions to publication

We won’t publish:

• any person’s personal information, including the requester’s
• confidential information
• information regarding the commercial, financial or professional affairs of entities
• information requests that are not in the public interest
• information we have decided to withhold on OIA grounds.

We reserve the right to decide which responses we will publish and why.

We may redact information or provide a summary or excerpt where appropriate.

Each quarter we publish our OIA statistics in the table below, setting out the number of requests we receive and our decision in relation to requests.

The information published on the OIA publication schedule was released in response to a specific request and was the information held by the FMA at the time of response.