These are required under the Financial Markets Conduct Act of 2013 (FMC), which was folded into the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Act 2019 (FSLAA) which set up the FAP regime.

The FMA says it will use the information it gets back to monitor licence holders’ continuing ability to effectively perform their role of giving financial advice.

The first regulatory returns will cover the year from July 1 2023 to June 30 2024, and must be supplied to the authority by September 30 2024.

The information on these returns will cover the nature, size and complexity of a FAP service.

In producing this form, the FMA said it carefully considered industry feedback. As a result, it reduced the number of questions in the final document and refined others.

The final set of questions cover a range of topics, such as how long a provider has been in business, how many advisers work in that business, what is their level of skill or training and how many retail or wholesale clients they have.

Other sections will look at the size of funds under management or the types of financial products being offered. The forms will also look at the issues of vulnerable clients, advertising and how complaints are handled. Outsourcing will be considered, along with business continuity and cyber security.

All this information can be found on the FMA website here: https://www.fma.govt.nz/business/services/financial-advice-provider/fap-regulatory-returns/

The FMA said the data it gets back will help it monitor licence holders' capability to effectively perform the financial advice service according to applicable eligibility criteria.

It would include annually updated information and would use dynamic reporting, with FAPs only needing to answer questions relevant to their licence class and the financial advice services they provide. This would avoid a ‘one size-fits-all’ approach.

The FMA's Executive Director for Regulatory Delivery, Clare Bolingford, said these returns would help target resources efficiently to identify areas with the highest potential risk of harming consumers.

“We will take a reasonable approach,” she said.

“We will engage with the sector to provide guidance and expectations for completing the first regulatory returns.

“We expect that in subsequent years, FAPs will provide increasingly more accurate answers as their processes mature.”