retirement.org.nz

This, our fourth Statement of Intent, sets out the intended direction of the Retirement Commission over the next three years. It describes how we will work towards our goals and carry out our core business.

The 2009/10 year covered by this Statement of Intent will be a busy and significant one for the Commission. During the past year the Commission’s operating environment has changed significantly with the worldwide economic downturn and finance company collapses in New Zealand. As well as highlighting the importance of financial literacy, these developments have caused a significant increase in demand for financial education.

We have responded by providing up-to-the-minute information through sorted.org.nz and other channels to help people make informed financial decisions in the face of changing interest rates, rising unemployment and falling house values. Usage of the Sorted website and booklets has increased
considerably – in January 2009 website traffic was up by 30 percent compared with the same month in the previous year.

We expect this trend to continue in the coming year and the need and demand for Sorted resources to continue to grow. Our challenge is to keep the highly successful Sorted website and its associated booklets and seminar modules, relevant, current and accessible. We will continue to identify and test different channels and resources to ensure we reach a wide range of New Zealanders.

Despite changes in the Commission’s operating environment, our strategic direction remains the same. Our overarching goal is that New Zealanders are financially sorted. This continues to be supported by the three pillars of creating a financially educated population, developing a trusted financial services sector
and maintaining stable and effective government policy so people can plan their retirement income with some certainty.

We are pleased with how the National Strategy for Financial Literacy has been acknowledged by a variety of public and private sector players following its launch last year. The Financial Literacy 09 summit, held in June 2009, marked the completion of the strategy’s first year. In the coming year we hope to enhance the standing of the strategy’s advisory committee with the support of the Government and business.

The Commission’s role in relation to financial education in schools will undergo a significant change in 2009/10. We will pass responsibility for integrating personal financial education into school programmes for years 1-10 to the Ministry of Education. Our role will shift to monitoring progress and providing support. We will work with both the ministry and the Education Review Office to do this.

In tertiary education, work is underway to develop teaching resources and evaluation techniques for seven basic unit standards in personal financial education. In the coming year we will be working with a group of organisations to promote these to industry training organisations and educational institutions.

Building a trusted financial services sector in New Zealand is going to take time given the recent loss of savings many people have suffered and the disruption that the economic crisis has brought to the sector. As we have seen, trust is hard to establish and easy to destroy. We will work with the sector’s key representative bodies and the Government to help New Zealanders understand how to get good financial advice and how to better recognise sound financial products.

Initial desk research is underway in preparation for the statutory 2010 review of retirement income policies. We will provide input into the terms of reference for the review in consultation with the Minister for Social Development and Employment. We will also be reviewing progress against the recommendations of the 2007 review.

I am confident that the 2009/12 Statement of Intent will provide a clear and valuable picture of our work and the results we seek.

DIANA CROSSAN
RETIREMENT COMMISSIONER