Terms and conditions

What you agree to when you use our online services

These terms and conditions for the Financial Services Providers Register (FSPR) set out what's required when you use our online services. They help ensure that the information you provide us is kept secure, and that the information we must make available to the public is accurate and as up to date as possible.

FSPR terms and conditions

The FSPR is administered by the Companies Office, which is part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). You’re being asked to agree to these terms and conditions for the use of our online services, so read them carefully and ensure you understand them. If you choose to accept them and continue on to create an online services account, these terms and conditions will form an agreement between you and MBIE.

Our commitment to you

If you agree to our terms and conditions, we’ll use all reasonable care and skill to:

provide online services that are easy to use, with online help and guidance
make these services available 24 hours a day — excluding maintenance and outages
provide you with voice and email support from our Business Service Centre during normal business hours — but not on public holidays
keep all non-public information you've provided to us secure from unauthorised access
only allow authorised users to change information you've provided to us
ensure that information we provide about our services is kept up to date.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) transparency statement describes the kind of information MBIE gathers to ensure it can effectively:

protect people, information, and places
ensure regulatory compliance, and
detect and prevent criminal offending.

MBIE’s transparency statement Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

Disclaimer

MBIE doesn’t accept any responsibility or liability for:

the accuracy or content of material on the FSPR
any loss you incur in connection with your use of these services, including any costs and expenses.

Your commitment to us

You agree that you will:

abide by the terms of use governing the RealMe® login service by which you access our services
not knowingly or recklessly use, or attempt to use, any of our services for a purpose for which it wasn't intended, including any unlawful purpose
notify our Business Service Centre immediately if you know, or have reason to believe, that there has been, or is about to be, fraudulent or other unlawful use of any of our services.

If you’re an administrator of an organisation's online services account, you also agree to:

manage access to our services by other users who are connected to your organisation, by keeping user information updated and closing user accounts if users no longer need access to our services via your organisation
manage delegated authorities, which provide your organisation with the ability to make use of our services on behalf of other users.

If you grant delegated authority to allow another user to access our services on your behalf, you agree to:

acknowledge that you’re granting that user the right to make use of our services on your behalf, including but not limited to, the amendment of data in relation to the organisation that has had delegated authority applied to it
accept that any action performed by users to whom you’ve granted delegated authority is, in effect, being done on your behalf and that you’re responsible for any actions they perform on your behalf.

If you accept delegated authority to make use of our services on behalf of another user, you agree to:

acknowledge that you’re accepting the right to make use of our services on their behalf, including but not limited to, the amendment of data for an entity over which you have delegated authority
acknowledge that any action performed by you in relation to any delegated authority you’ve been granted is made in the knowledge that you’re acting on behalf of the user who has granted you that authority.

The purpose of your commitment to us is to protect the integrity and security of:

our online services, and
the information provided by you and other people who use these services.

If you don’t honour your commitment, third parties may be able to take actions that appear to be on your behalf. These actions may result in a breach of security or privacy and you may be held responsible for this.

Access to our services — RealMe®

Access to our services is governed by your RealMe® login, which provides us with security over access to our sites and identifies who you are.

RealMe® — what it is RealMe®

You are responsible for keeping your RealMe username and password confidential. Any actions on our sites from your RealMe username and password will be considered by us to have been made by you.

RealMe lets you access our registers and connects you to your user account with MBIE.

Your user account provides us with associated information, including:

details about you — for example, your email address
services you’ve opted to use
organisations you’re linked to, if any
details you’re authorised to edit for those organisations— for example, companies for which you're able to file documents
whether you’re an administrator for an organisation registered with us
whether you’ve been delegated the authority to act on behalf of any other user(s).

If you’re an administrator for an organisation, you can set up additional accounts for other users attached to that organisation to use our services. Any users you create will need to obtain their own RealMe login before they can activate their user account with us.

Fees and levies

You’re responsible for the payment of fees and levies for the services we provide you under your online services account, no matter who uses it. If there's a charge for the service you're using, you'll be advised of the amount due at the end of the transaction and taken to our payment gateway.

Refer to our fee schedule for online services to find out what you need to pay for.

Schedule of fees and levies

Direct debit payment option

We offer a direct debit payment option that allows customers to make use of our services, charge them to an account, receive an invoice at the end of each month and pay by direct debit on the 20th of the following month. This option can be adopted by an organisation or by an individual user to pay fees.

If you select the direct debit payment option, we email you a Direct Debit Authority Form to complete and return to us.

Credit checks

We may perform a credit check on your organisation (or you, if you’re applying for the direct debit payment option for your own user account) through a credit reference agency.

We reserve the right to decline any direct debit payment option request, based on the results of any credit reference check or based on past history of fees payment with the Ministry.

Monthly invoices

At the beginning of each month, you’ll be emailed an invoice detailing all fee-bearing services used during the previous month. The invoices and other notices will be sent to the email address you've given us. We, and anyone to whom we've assigned the amounts you owe us, can assume any invoice or notice sent electronically has been delivered on sending, unless we receive a 'Failed to Deliver' message.

If you don’t receive an invoice by email, a copy of your invoice will be available online. You will also have access to your transactions through our online fees search facility or you can download a data file containing the list of transactions.

Incorrect invoices

Call the contact number or email the address displayed on your invoice if you think there is a mistake with your invoice. Any incorrect fees will be credited to your account. If the query has been received and processed prior to the 20th of the month, this will reduce the amount to be direct debited. Queries received or processed after the 20th will be credited to your next month’s invoice.

Non-payment

If the direct debit payment is not successful against your bank account, we follow up with you to find out why.

First month of dishonour

We’ll contact you to determine what went wrong and work with you to resolve the problem, ready for the direct debit run the following month.

Second month of dishonour

Your account will be restricted to the credit card payment option only. We’ll contact you to arrange payment of the due amount.

If payment is not received

In the first instance, we'll contact you to understand why the fees and levies have not been paid, and ask you to make the payment.

If fees and levies are still not paid, we’ll look to revoke the service that we’ve provided to you. For example, we'll take steps to deregister your FSP. If revoking the service isn’t possible, then we may refer the matter to a debt collection agency. You may be required to pay any costs that are incurred in recovering the money you owe us.

We may vary the steps in this process, depending on your individual circumstances.

Internet banking payment option

We also offer the option to pay by internet banking, which allows you to make a direct credit payment from your bank account. This option is available only to individuals who agree to the Windcave terms and conditions prior to authorising the payment.

Windcave terms and conditions Windcave

In the event of non-payment, or non-compliance of our payment terms, you will be responsible for all legal costs. We will look to revoke the service that we have provided to you. If revoking the service is not possible, then we may refer the matter to a debt collection agency.

Unlawful access or use

If you knowingly access or use, or attempt to access or use (or allow an unauthorised person to access or use), any of our services for an unlawful purpose (including but not limited to fraud or attempted fraud or hacking or attempted hacking), you'll be liable to pay any party (or MBIE on its behalf) the amount of the loss suffered by them caused directly or indirectly by your unlawful actions. For the avoidance of doubt, this clause isn't intended to confer benefits enforceable by third parties under the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017.

Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 New Zealand Legislation

Suspension of your online services account

For the protection of users, other people, or MBIE itself, we may suspend or disable your online services account without notice if we consider that:

disabling your online services account is necessary to maintain the integrity or security of our services or any organisation or person
the online services account is being misused or has otherwise been compromised, or
you breach these terms and conditions.

Where appropriate, we’ll notify you if we suspend or disable your online services account as soon as practicable after doing so.

Privacy

The privacy statement for our services applies to your personal information collected by the Ministry.

By registering for an online services account and agreeing to these terms and conditions, you'll be regarded as having read and agreed to the terms of that privacy statement. Make sure you've read and are comfortable with the privacy statement before agreeing to these terms and conditions.

Privacy Companies Office

Email address privacy

We won't disclose your email address to third parties, but we may use it to update you with information about our services.

Disputes

If you have a dispute with MBIE in connection with these terms and conditions or any of our services, call our Business Service Centre. Both you and our Business Service Centre will use all reasonable efforts in good faith to resolve the dispute. If you and our Business Service Centre can't resolve the dispute to your satisfaction, you may ask the Business Service Centre to escalate the dispute to the appropriate MBIE representative.

MBIE will then promptly contact you to try to resolve the dispute with you. If, following this, the dispute is still not resolved to your satisfaction, you may take such action as you consider appropriate, such as making a complaint to the Ombudsman or commencing legal proceedings.

Office of the Ombudsman

Invalidity or unenforceability

If any of these terms and conditions, or their application to any person or circumstances is, to any extent, held to be invalid or unenforceable:

the remainder of these terms and conditions or the application of such terms and conditions to any other person or circumstances shall not be affected
each term shall be valid and enforceable to the extent permitted by law
the invalid or unenforceable term will be deemed to be amended to reflect, as nearly as possible, the original intention (as determined from this website).

Amendments to terms and conditions and privacy statement

We can revise these terms and conditions and the privacy statement from time to time. We will advise you of any changes by a notice on this website. Your continued use of our services, through the act of making use of your online services account with us, indicates your acceptance of those changes.