About Us

Welcome to the New Zealand Financial Benchmark Facility’s (NZFBF) website. The NZFBF is a subsidiary of the New Zealand Financial Markets Association (NZFMA) and was formed in April 2021 to act as the Benchmark Administrator for New Zealand’s Interest Rates Benchmarks. The NZFMA continues to operate its other core functions such as managing fee liable access to benchmarks, training, accreditation and advocacy for members.

 

The restructuring of the NZFMA’s business was driven by a need to improve governance to ensure New Zealand’s interest rate benchmarks are recognized as representing global best practice and remain acceptable to the many global counterparts that transact in NZ dollar products, such as derivatives, with our domestic members.

 

This has been achieved by:

  • Ensuring the benchmarks comply with the IOSCO Principles for Financial Benchmarks;
  • Ensuring the benchmarks gain equivalence with European Benchmark Regulation (EU BMR);
  • Applying to be a licensed Benchmark Administrator when the Financial Markets Authority implements the licensing regime some time in Q2 2021; and,
  • Ensuring independent oversight of the benchmark process with the establishment of an NZFBF Board. The majority of Directors will meet an independence test as described in the constitution. This will also include more transparent management of conflicts of interest and the implementation of more accessible complaints and whistle-blowing processes. Governance documentation can be found here.

The NZFBF will be responsible for the daily calculation and publication of New Zealand’s Interest Rate benchmarks (BKBM, OCR Compound Index and Closing rates). The team will also review Benchmark methodology and monitor benchmark developments in other jurisdictions.

 

Along with the Governance documentation noted above, the website also contains the Operating Rules, Guidelines and Principles for each of the Benchmarks, free to air benchmark data (with a 24-hour delay) and any NZFBF announcements made concerning the benchmarks, via market notice.

 

For further information or queries please contact us.