Buying leads is legal for New Zealand advisers. How you contact them and what you do next is regulated. A plain-English guide to staying inside the rules.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
New Zealand advisers ask this question because the financial advice regime changed the vocabulary around who may do what, and it is not obvious where a purchased enquiry sits inside it. It sits outside the licensing question entirely, which is the useful thing to know.
What follows describes the regime as the FMA publishes it. It is not advice on your own licence or arrangements.
Anyone who gives regulated financial advice to retail clients must hold, or operate under, a Financial Advice Provider licence issued by the FMA. All financial advice providers must be registered for the relevant service on the Financial Service Providers Register.
The licence covers the advice. It does not extend to, and does not gate, the acquisition of prospective clients. There is no lead-buying authorisation, no notification requirement, and no restriction on paying a third party for an introduction.
| Activity | Licensed? | Governed by |
|---|---|---|
| Buying consumer enquiry data | No licence exists or is required | Privacy Act, contract |
| Contacting the consumer by phone | No licence for the call itself | Privacy Act IPP 3A |
| Sending a commercial email or SMS | No licence for the message | Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 |
| Giving regulated financial advice | Yes, FAP licence or operating under one | FMCA Part 6, Code of Conduct |
The FMA has published a breakdown: just over 3,000 financial advice businesses, comprising 1,807 Financial Advice Providers and 1,200 Authorised Bodies, engaging 10,743 financial advisers and 12,287 nominated representatives. 82% of financial advice providers are businesses with fewer than ten advisers spread across New Zealand.
| Nominated representatives | 12,287 |
|---|---|
| Financial advisers | 10,743 |
| Financial Advice Providers | 1,807 |
| Authorised Bodies | 1,200 |
82% of financial advice providers have fewer than ten advisers. The regime is largely made up of small firms, which is why compliance controls that require a dedicated person tend not to survive contact with reality.
Hold, or operate under, a FAP licence for the advice you give. Confirm your own status and your authorised body arrangements before you scale supply, rather than after.
The Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services applies unchanged. A purchased enquiry arrives with less context than a referral, so meeting the same suitability standard means asking more at the start.
IPP 3A applies because you collected personal information about someone from a source other than that person. Take reasonable steps to make them aware you hold it, what for, who you are, and their access and correction rights. IPP 9 requires you not to keep it longer than the purpose requires.
The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 requires consent, accurate sender identification, and a functional unsubscribe on commercial electronic messages to New Zealand addresses. The consent question on a purchased record turns on what the supplier's form told the consumer.
The efficient approach puts the controls upstream and inside the tools, because a control that depends on remembering will fail during the week you most needed it.
How Lead Foundry answers this: Enquiries come from consumer brands we own, and the form tells the consumer a licensed adviser will contact them. The source brand travels on the record, so the origin of your call is a fact you can state rather than a gap you have to talk around.
Yes. No licence is required to buy consumer enquiry data and no statute prohibits it. You must hold or operate under a Financial Advice Provider licence to give the regulated financial advice that follows, meet the Code of Professional Conduct, satisfy IPP 3A of the Privacy Act 2020 as an indirect collector, and comply with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 for commercial electronic messages.
There is no notification requirement for buying enquiry data. The FMA licenses financial advice providers for the advice they give, and lead acquisition sits outside the licensing perimeter. Your ordinary licence obligations, including those relating to conduct and record keeping, continue to apply to the advice that follows.
The FMA reports just over 3,000 financial advice businesses, made up of 1,807 Financial Advice Providers and 1,200 Authorised Bodies, engaging 10,743 financial advisers and 12,287 nominated representatives. 82% of financial advice providers have fewer than ten advisers.
A Financial Advice Provider holds the licence. An Authorised Body is a separate legal entity authorised to provide financial advice services under someone else's FAP licence. Both must be registered for the relevant service on the Financial Service Providers Register, and advisers give advice either directly for a FAP or under one of these arrangements.