At present, the systemically-important banks dominate Tāne Mahuta’s ecosystem. The important insurance sector is also patchy, both in customer coverage and competitiveness. Life insurance, for example, has a low coverage rate across New Zealanders and a high premium-cost compared internationally. Meanwhile, general insurance has better coverage, but the industry is heavily concentrated in the number of providers.
6 The presence of a large number of internationally active banks in the region requires close cooperation among supervisors across the globe to resolve the home-host issues. It would become all the more important for the jurisdictions where the approaches for Basel II would differ.