Rob Everett CEO at Financial Markets Authority.
Rob Everett, the still relatively new boss of New Zealand's financial markets watchdog, is not setting out to be a party-pooper.
But, just 90 days into the job and on the third anniversary of the Financial Market Authority's birth, he says bluntly the key issue for the FMA is confidence.
"I don't know what you feel but I feel confidence is fragile," Everett confides 10 minutes into a lengthy (he does have a slight tendency to loquaciousness) exposition.
"Yes, everyone's more confident that they were six months ago and more confident than they were 12 months ago and all the rest of it.
"That's good, and that's great and I'm not sure the FMA should take too much credit for that but markets are already beginning to show signs of quite a lot of volatility.
"Equity markets globally? What do I know? But I guess it's about to get a lot worse."
The former Merrill Lynch banker reckons "we're all in line for a correction". He cites property prices - all-time highs in a whole bunch of places not just New Zealand. ("London, where I came from, being another example of a quite bizarre property market").
All this is by way of prefacing his point that the FMA has to make sure people have confidence in the rules, in the regulators, in the infrastructure and how to navigate the financial markets.
In various speeches he is trying to make it clearer to people that a correction will come ("unless I get fired very early") at some point in his term. "It's unthinkable we won't have a significant crash."
The FMA will step up its role in financial literacy and investor education - something Everett feels is particularly important as more New Zealanders pile into KiwiSaver. So when the inevitable market downturn happens and the value of KiwiSaver members' funds drop, they will be more inclined to take the long view rather than take fright.
"I think it's our job to try to find the areas where we can help people make decisions that will survive high interest rates, lower equity markets, property prices crashing, the odd bad apple in a barrel in terms of providers of financial services or financial advice or property syndicates for instance.
"We're not going to be naive that you can eradicate some of the harm that will come to people in markets. What we're trying to do is create an environment where people feel that we have closed off the avenues of harm that didn't need to happen."
Under Everett, the FMA will get alongside other players including media to put branded messages out.
He is cautious about pushing standards so high in the financial advisory world that no-one will want to take on the added compliance burden.
It's not all about cosying up to the industry players. Everett makes the point that more people have gone to jail in New Zealand in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis than in most other jurisdictions.
"The director committee is definitely influenced by what we have done and are keen to hear about how they can avoid being locked up."
An indication of Everett's style came with the Genesis Energy float where the FMA insisted on independent research. "Genesis showed with the right determination and the occasional punch thrown in public we can influence things so actually investors are getting a better ability to find information and read it."
In forums Everett is careful to float how the FMA might measure a hundred per cent success rate.
There are still a couple of actions hanging over from the finance companies' bust. But he also plans to use the tools the FMA has been given under the Financial Markets Conduct Act as counter-measures to bad market behaviour.
"I didn't take this job just to sit here and wait for things to land on us. I took the job because I believed that, where New Zealand is with the rewrite of the legislation, with the FMA, with the acceptance that although the financial crisis played out a bit differently here than other places there were things broken - we've got the opportunity to move it forward - something that actually influences the industry, consumers, potentially influences the rulemakers and Parliament about what we want to use those powers for."