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The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has published its of whether NZX met its statutory obligations as a licensed market operator.

NZX plays a vital role in helping to achieve fair, orderly and transparent financial markets in New Zealand to promote confident and informed participation by investors.

NZX complied with its market operator obligations during the review period (calendar year 2018).

Last year, the FMA concluded that the NZX did not meet its obligation to have adequate arrangements to monitor the conduct of participants on, or in relation to its markets, due to a lack of market experience in its market surveillance function.

This year’s review acknowledges the positive changes made by the Market Surveillance team during the review period and the FMA supports the NZX’s approach to the continuous improvement of the team.

Liam Mason, FMA Acting Co-director of Capital Markets, said, “We are satisfied from our observations and the feedback we’ve received that the capability of the market surveillance function has improved since last year. We also support the work the NZX is doing in preparing for market developments, including the increase in algorithmic trading.”

The review also considered an outage of the NZX’s systems on the 28th August 2018. The report finds that while the outage was disruptive and concerning, the NZX has implemented immediate and long-term solutions to prevent the outage reoccurring.