FMA staff given weekly survey asking how they spend each day
Staff at the Financial Markets Authority have been told to complete a weekly survey detailing how they spend each workday, tasks down to the half hour, names and durations of meetings, and whether their workload is manageable. The FMA said it's designed to help them monitor and improve efficiency, but it's raised some eyebrows. Lauren Crimp has more.
To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following:
See terms of use.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Hurricanes shatter Moana dreams and send Blues into Super Rugby playoffs
Ereatara Enari of the Hurricanes, 2025. Photo: Elias Rodriguez / The Hurricanes shattered Moana Pasifika's dreams of a maiden Super Rugby Pacific playoff campaign with a crushing 64-12 victory on Saturday that sent the defending champion Blues into next week's quarter-finals instead. The Hurricanes cemented fourth place in the final standings and will travel to Canberra next Saturday to play the ACT Brumbies, while the Blues, who earlier beat the New South Wales Waratahs 46-6, will visit the table-topping Chiefs. In the other playoff, the 12-times champion Crusaders will host Queensland Reds, who concluded the regular season on Saturday night with a 52-7 win over Fijian Drua on the back of four first-half tries from winger Lachie Anderson. Moana had hoped to be there too on the back of a breakout season but even redoubtable skipper Ardie Savea was unable to inspire them to the bonus-point victory they needed to edge out the Blues and claim the sixth and last playoff spot. Number eight Semisi Tupou Ta'eiloa gave Moana the perfect start at Wellington Stadium with a try after six minutes but Hurricanes were 14-7 up before a quarter of an hour had expired. Hooker Jacob Devery went over on the back of a rolling maul before flanker Devan Flanders showed his footballing skills with a chip and chase for the second try. Savea grabbed a couple of turnovers but it only delayed the inevitable as Hurricanes scrumhalf Cam Roigard went over from an intercept and centre Peter Umaga-Jensen rampaged through the Moana defence to give the home side a 28-7 halftime lead. Umaga-Jensen barged over for his second try 10 minutes after the break before Raymond Tuputupu, Pouri Rakete-Stones, Billy Proctor, Ereatara Enari and Tjay Clarke completed the 10-try rout. "Really pleasing, not only that we got the result, but that we played the way we did going into the finals," said Hurricanes co-captain Du'Plessis Kirifi. "From next week on, you've got to just start again. Start again and go hard." Savea, who scored a consolation try against his old team in the 65th minute off a catch-and-drive, expressed his pride in what Moana had achieved this year. "We're not satisfied," he said. "Our goal was to win the thing and make top six, but that wasn't meant to be." Blues fullback Corey Evans scores a try, 2025. Photo: Andrew Cornaga/ The Blues earlier ended the slender post-season hopes of the Waratahs by running in seven tries in a bonus-point victory at Eden Park to extend their winning streak over the Sydney-based club to 11 matches. Centre Rieko Ioane scored a hat-trick and winger Mark Tele'a two tries on the back of an attack skilfully marshalled by their fellow All Black Beauden Barrett as the Blues gave the Waratahs a lesson in clinical finishing. "We just wanted to play shackle-free and have some fun and I think we did that tonight," said Ioane, who joined Doug Howlett as the Blues' all time leading try-scorer with 55. "We knew how crucial the bonus point was, and to hold them to no tries was awesome." On Friday, the Chiefs locked up top spot in the standings and home advantage throughout the playoffs with a 41-21 victory over the Highlanders and the Crusaders beat the Brumbies 33-31 to win the shootout for second. -Reuters
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Money in transaction accounts costing New Zealanders billions
Experts are reminding New Zealanders to consider whether cash they have stored in the bank could be be earning them interest. Photo: 123RF New Zealanders may be leaving money on the table by keeping their cash in transaction accounts. David Cunningham, chief executive of mortgage broking firm Squirrel, said there was significantly more money in transaction accounts now than before Covid. Most banks do not pay interest on transaction accounts. Cunningham said transaction account balances had peaked at $53 billion when interest rates were close to zero, and people could see little reason to change. It had fallen to a recent low of $37b but had now lifted again to $39b. "Almost all of this earns 0 percent [interest]." If that money was shifted into an account paying 3 percent, it would give savers just under $1.2 billion in interest a year. Cunningham said before Covid hit, there was about $28 billion in transaction accounts. "You're always going to need some float in your transaction accounts but a lot of this is lazy money." He said it was customer inertia that also delivered higher profits to the banks, because they could make money from the cash sitting in the accounts. But he said banks should be encouraging customers to check that they had their money in the right accounts. "Every time you log in they could remind you that you've got say $20,000 in a transaction account earning nothing and if you moved it to savings you could earn x… that would be a way to make sure people were better off," Cunningham said. Claire Matthews, a banking expert from Massey University, said some people kept their money in transaction accounts because of the ease of access. "They may have concerns about fees to access it if it's in a savings account. Partly I think it's because they don't think the interest will be worth it - but they may not have actually looked at the numbers, because depending on the amount it may be very worthwhile over time. Partly, however, it is probably just not getting around to doing it." Banks have been cutting rates for term deposits and some savings this week, after the official cash rate reduction . Westpac said on Thursday it was cutting the rate offered on a number of term deposits by 10 basis points. ASB said it was cutting the rate offered on its Savings On Call, ASB Cash Fund, Savings Plus and Headstart accounts by 20 basis points. That took the Headstart rate to 2.7 percent. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- RNZ News
Rotorua tourism, hospo businesses concered about exchange rate fluctuations
The Rotorua Museum - Most survey respondents were from tourism, accommodation, or hospitality and food service. Photo: LDR / Laura Smith The latest Rotorua business sentiment survey shows local companies are not immune to global instability. Geopolitical volatility was the highest-ranked concern for business leaders, with 43 percent very or extremely concerned about its effect on their business. This was the first time global concerns had outweighed local issues, such as finding skilled staff, the survey showed. RotoruaNZ chief executive Andrew Wilson said this showed many business leaders were very connected with their global markets. Most respondents were from tourism, accommodation, or hospitality and food service. While these might be less affected by tariffs then export-led industries, Wilson said geopolitical volatility led to fluctuations in exchange rates, which effected the value of a visitor dollar. "Obviously, when we've got a weaker New Zealand dollar, we look very favourable for international tourism." He said the key for businesses riding out this volatility was having diversity in the markets they targeted. "Within those international markets, have you got a good spread in terms of the types of countries you are focused on, so you're not ending up in a scenario where you've got all your eggs in one basket." This was similar to other industries, like agriculture , which was also encouraged to look for new markets. Wilson said he wasn't completely surprised to see the survey result. "We've got a local economy, which is quite export-focused, so from that perspective, whether it is tourism or forest or wood processing, what's happening in that global environment is really important for local businesses." RotoruaNZ began the business sentiment survey three years ago to get a better view of what was happening in the city's economy. "A lot of banks do business confidence surveys, but we found a lot of the data was aggregated up at a regional or national level, so it was really about making sure we've got a view about what is going on in our local economy here in Rotorua," he said. Business sentiment was up 14 percent since the last survey in October 2024, but was still a net negative of minus-11 percent - higher than the national figure of minus-29 percent, but Wilson said the trend toward positivity was a good sign. "Certainly, that advance-metric of the positivity trend up is a really good signal in terms of what we will start to see over the next 12-24 months in terms of business activity." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
