Official Information Act requests

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 the 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 received 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.