Mike's Minute: We need a report into why we do so many reports

If you are really interested - and that in part is the problem - are we really interested? We all moan about banks. Banks are big and they are successful, but are they really the robber barons the critics make them out to be? Well, do we have a market study for you. A preliminary paper by August, that will give us a bit of a steer as to what we are looking at. Followed by the full report in August of next year. Most likely under a new government, that has to be fair to them offered up a similar series of criticisms as the current government. The exception being that they wanted a select committee probe, an idea by the way that was supported by every party in Parliament bar the Labour Party. Now as to whether you are interested, that's important because the Government has to a degree been here before, they made quite the noise you might remember around open banking. Open banking allows you to transfer details easily between banks, everyone has quick access to all the data so the age old issue of it being too hard to swap banks vanishes - in theory. Have a look at open banking in Australia. At best its been a lukewarm launch, most people will tell you its mediocre and is nothing like the game changer the spookers make it out to be. Which is not to say we shouldn’t do it, because we should. But it is to say, there aren't many magic bullets and that’s before you get to the general malaise around consumer behaviour. We moan because it's easy, doing things takes effort and that is more often than not where we give up. For my money - no pun intended - I would like to see what the Commerce Commission thinks of the margin the banks run on money in versus money out. I would like to see what they say about the speed at which the deposit rates rise, and the gap between those deposit rates and the lending rates. But as much as they are genuine questions, what I also know is that in the past 15 odd years banks in various parts of the world have been tested like never before and more than one of them haven't stood up. In New Zealand they have all stood up and stood up well. And now ironically the argument is, are they too successful? The report looks at the big 4: BNZ, Westpac, ANZ, ASB. But not Kiwibank. Why not? Why aren't we all at KiwiBank if we hate the Australians so much. Why weren't we at HSBC before they pulled the plug last week? Doesn’t seem a lack of competition to me; so what will they find? My bet is what they have found in petrol, building and supermarkets. It ain't perfect, but it ain't that broke either. So maybe ultimately we need a report into why we do so many reports.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.