The Commerce Commission says it won't name the bank its Chairman John Small referred to as "recalcitrant," because it wants to "protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence."
Speaking to Parliament's Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee on December 3, Small noted a recent meeting with a bank CEO about open banking.
"One of the other commissioners and myself had a meeting with one of the big bank CEOs 10 days ago. We wrote to them because we considered them recalcitrant in several ways. And the CEO came in, we had a cordial discussion, and resolved things that way," Small said, and Interest.co.nz reported on December 4.
Interest.co.nz then asked the Commission which bank Small was referring to and who else attended the meeting. The consumer watchdog turned this query into an Official Information Act (OIA) request. The consumer watchdog responded to this "request" on Friday.
The Commerce Commission says it decided to withhold the name of the "recalcitrant" bank under the following OIA section.
"9(2)(ba)(i): to protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or which any person has been or could be compelled to provide under the authority of any enactment, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such information should continue to be supplied."
"In making these decisions to withhold information, we have considered the public interest in making the information available. In this case, we have determined that the public interest does not outweigh the need to withhold the information at this time," the Commission said.
It did say Commissioner Bryan Chapple attended the meeting with Small.
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