John Small: The 'faster, safer, cheaper' banking experience of the future

Economy Watch

The process of growth will be the main benefit from a scaled up Kiwibank, while public acclaim will be a key measure of open banking's success, Commerce Commission Chairman John Small says.

Small spoke to interest.co.nz for the latest episode of the Of Interest podcast, which will be published later on Wednesday. The interview came after the Commission released the final report from its market study into personal banking services. The Government says it'll act on all 14 recommendations from the report.

Speaking in a previous Of Interest podcast episode, after the Commission's interim report was issued in March, Small said the most important of that report's 16 recommendations was; "The Reserve Bank should review its prudential capital settings to ensure they are competitively neutral and smaller players are better able to compete."

So why is that recommendation gone from the final report?

"We still feel that there's aspects of the regulatory regime that could be improved to promote competition. We've just, I suppose, got a bit more refined about how we're suggesting that that happens. And we've keyed in, particularly to a number of programmes of work that the Reserve Bank already has underway. So we've made a fairly broad overall suggestion about how the bank thinks about competition, which is essentially that we would like them to put a bit more focus on barriers to entry and expansion, so that it's more easily able for small players to get into the market, particularly the kind of players that we expect to be able to disrupt this industry who don't look like the traditional banks," Small says.

"Another one that applies more to the traditional banks is to think about the way that risk weights are calculated for reasonably standardised loans and make that more granular...so there's less averaging involved. It's a better, it's a more accurate, representation of risk and it gives them the ability to price loans differently depending on just how risky they are."

A helping hand for community housing

The Commission's also calling for the Reserve Bank to reduce the risk rating of lending to housing co-operatives and community housing providers to lower, and more accurate, levels. This is currently treated as commercial lending rather than housing lending.

Risk weightings are used to link the minimum amount of capital banks must hold, with the risk profile of the bank's lending activities.

"The work around mortgage advisors is also more nuanced, I should say, [is] probably the way to put it. We found out quite a bit about the mortgage advisor sector after the draft report and we had some of them around at our consultation conference... We [also] took some soundings in Australia about how their mortgage advisor sector works," Small says.

'The process of growth'

On the recommendation to scale up Kiwibank by getting it access to more capital, Small says the main competitive benefit "is about the process of growth rather than what happens once they're big."

"So we want them to be taking chunks of market share out of the big four on their way up, and for that to provoke a competitive reaction from the larger banks."

"What will really matter will be them [ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac] perceiving a real threat of losing share, because that is what will stimulate them to fight back," Small says.

'Interesting stuff' from Westpac NZ's CEO

The Commission also calls for the acceleration and co-ordination of progress on open banking. In the podcast Small talks about lessons from the United Kingdom and hearing "some real interesting stuff" from Westpac NZ CEO Catherine McGrath. Prior to taking the Westpac job McGrath worked for Barclays and was involved in a Competition and Markets Authority open banking committee in the UK.

"We're just copying what we can, ruthlessly copying what we can," Small says. "So, you know, I absolutely grant you that in terms of overall open banking as distinct from payments, it hasn't been a roaring success in either of those places [Australia or the UK]. I think we can learn from both of them and do it a lot better."

Better bank switching desired

The Commission also says the bank switching service, operated through the bank-owned Payments NZ, needs investment and improvement.

"We were a bit surprised, to be honest, when we visited the headquarters of the big banks and asked them about this service and asked them in particular, 'if I was to come in off the street as a customer of someone else's bank and was interested in converting to you, would you recommend that I use this service?' And generally speaking no, they wouldn't."

"And they don't ask their staff to recommend that. So that tells me that it's obviously not being promoted. I think it could be improved, the actual functionality could be improved, it needs to be more visible and known and also they need to report on its usage, its success rates, what people think about it, and just that sort of basic transparency hygiene system would be very helpful indeed," says Small.

In terms of how open banking's success could be measured, Small suggests public acclaim is one way.

"I think if ordinary people on the street see it as being useful and working for them, then that's a great indicator...I would like to see it taking market share off the banks. Definitely. I'd like to see more variety of services out there and definitely like to see government agencies using it, because I think that's an important driver of success."

A message for consumers

And what's Small's message for bank customers?

"My message is you really should shop around. I don't like to just put everything back onto the consumers, but consumers can get better deals than I was aware of before I started this market study. For example, mortgages. You can usually drive a better bargain than you see on the headline [interest rate]. So shop around and be a savvy consumer."

"Also stand by and keep your eyes open for the innovation that we think is going to come. Some of this, by the way, is going to require change by consumers. There are a bunch of people out there, quite a large number of people in New Zealand, that are using somewhat dangerous banking technology that involves handing over their login details to a third party provider. We think that's something that has to be phased out. It's just dangerous. It's putting people at risk. So we think that what's coming up is going to be faster, safer, cheaper. Yeah. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will be here within 18 months or two years, I think."

What about splitting up the big banks?

Speaking earlier Wednesday Small said the Commission had considered recommending splitting big banks up.

"We did think about that, but we came to the view that the structure can be changed, the market structure can be changed through the two main levers that we're suggesting. One is a growing Kiwibank, and the main point about growing Kiwibank is that it will destabilise the big four as it grows. And then secondly, with open banking coming in, behind these are new business models that are not the same as the existing [ones]. And I think our view is that that's more disruptive and more enduring disruption, and more competitive innovation."

The Commission's final report is here.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.