New financial sector legislation came into effect in New Zealand on Thursday, ushering in the “beginning of a new era” in financial regulation, according to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), which sees, “a stronger regime… based on the good conduct of providers.”

“We have just completed the heavy lifting to put in place the infrastructure for the new regime,” said Rob Everett, chief executive of the FMA, in a statement.

The next phase of the sector’s transformation will be, “embedding high standards of conduct in financial service providers that place investors’ interests at the heart of their business models,” he added.

The FMA has been working to implement this new regime since the legislation, the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA), was passed by the New Zealland parliament in late 2013. Everett said the new laws were adopted to bring its regulation in line with international standards.

“The core objective for the FMA is to have fair, efficient and transparent markets that encourage people to be confident about saving and investing their money. Maintaining the market integrity that will support investor confidence is a joint responsibility between regulators and service providers, so our focus on conduct within the industry and how investors are treated is at the heart of our mission,” Everett said.

The FMA says its stakeholder surveys show that the industry understands the regulations are designed to ensure market integrity, not just compliance.

“Not only are investors better protected in the new regime, but over time they will start to feel the benefits of the FMA’s focus on good conduct,” Everett said. “The FMA’s conduct ‘lens’ means that providers will be evaluated – and responded to by the FMA — on how their customers experience their products and services and the results they get from those products.”