Heidi 

Kia ora and welcome to 5 minutes with the FMA I'm Heidi Norman and today we're looking at some new research from our data and intelligence team looking at financial confidence through the lens of gender and ethnicity. And I'm joined by our manager of data and intelligence, Ben Ritchie, welcome Ben. Tell us about the research. 
 
 Ben
 
 Kia ora Heidi. Yeah, that's right. I'm here to share some findings from our recent consumer confidence. Today there was a survey of over 2000 people, which is a good enough sample size to allow us to do a good breakdown of gender and ethnicity findings.
 
 Heidi
 
 Fantastic. And what did the research tell us?

Ben

Well, yeah, in terms of consumer confidence, what we've found were some significant differences between gender and by Māori and non-Māori. So for example, the group with the highest confidence in Financial markets were non-Māori men at around 1/3, so admittedly not very high confidence, but when you look at the confidence of women of financial markets, it's around half that and a Māori women were the lowest group in terms of confidence at around 15% so there's some significant differences there by gender and ethnicity. We're interested in whether those findings also translate into some of the findings that we found around different use of financial products. For example, buy now, pay later and credit cards and there's some different patterns of usage there by gender and ethnicity.

Heidi 

And what's what? Talk to me about buying now pay later. What are we saying then?

Ben

So for buying our pay later, what we found is that Māori women are the group that are most likely to use their product at around sort of 42%. Compared to other groups, I guess there's a there's a stronger tendency for woman and Māori to use by now pay later as opposed to credit cards, whereas on the other hand, credit cards are much more commonly used by males.

Heidi 

And I guess that's a really interesting finding. And what do we think that's telling us? Do you think that is because Māori is a younger population? Or do you think we're looking at some, I guess, some more of a systemic issue around access to financial products like credit cards?

Ben

Yeah, it's really good question, Heidi. We haven't been able to unpack all of the sort of drivers behind what we're seeing in terms of the findings just yet. We'll be exploring some of that work in future research when we roll out the survey again next year. But what we did find, though, is that across age groups and across income levels, there is still a tendency for Māori to be more likely to use buy now, pay later as opposed to credit cards. We're still not certain whether that implies necessarily bad outcomes in terms of consumer outcomes, but that's something to look into in future.

Heidi 

What did you find when you took a look at the uptake of investment products?

Ben

We found a similar sort of pattern. So what we found was that Māori women were less likely to have investments in in things such as managed funds, term deposits and shares that they bought for themselves. They could be the other thing that we found as well was around cryptocurrency purchase too so. Well, not a very high proportion, around 16% of of males reported having purchased cryptocurrencies. The proportion for women was less than 5%. So there's some gender differences there in terms of the products that people are are buying into. 

Heidi 

And what are some possible implications of these findings?

Ben

Yeah, that's an interesting question. There could be a few different drivers for this one, for example, one could be the wealth, wealth inequalities by gender and ethnicity. So if you've got more money you've you've got more money to invest, that could be one of the factors behind it. But also there there are other aspects as well like. Coming back to that question of confidence in financial markets and confidence and where the financial markets are adequately regulated. That might be a deterrent for women and Māori to participate in investment products. So we think there's potentially a role for the FMA there in terms of engaging with different communities, understanding their needs and drivers and helping communicate to them in ways that are like clear and accessible.

Heidi 

Can you tell us more about what the research shows when it comes to insurance?

Ben

Yeah, sure. It's a similar pattern to the investment products. So we're seeing that Māori are less likely to purchase insurance and that's across all insurance categories except for funeral insurance. So that we're talking about house insurance, health insurance, life insurance, those sort of products. So for example, one in four Māori will have health insurance based on the the survey findings where it's one in three for non-Māori.

Heidi 

So what's the value of doing this kind of research and how does it feed into the FMAs work programme?

Ben

Well, the survey is a really core component of our strategic objective of being more data and evidence led. So we're hopeful that these research findings will contribute to the ability of the FMA to understand consumer behaviour and how we can best support consumers to engage with financial markets in a way that ensures fair outcomes for all consumers in New Zealand. The other aspect of it is that we're hopeful that industry will pick up on these findings too and be able to use these in a way that will help them sort of respond to customer needs and design products and communications in a way that that yeah fits their circumstances. 

Heidi 

And if people want to find out more about it, where can they go?

Ben

We've got a fact sheet about this research that's available on our website at the moment, FMA.govt.nz.

Heidi 

Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for joining us today Ben much appreciate it. 
 
 Ben
 Thanks, Heidi. 
 
 Heidi
 
 And thank you for tuning in to 5 minutes with the FMA. See you next time.