New Zealand's financial markets will open up to new forms of capital raising in proposed regulations to make the markets fairer, the government announced Thursday.

The regulations are needed as part of the Financial Markets Conduct (FMC) Bill and will be opened to public consultation before coming into force next year, Commerce Minister Craig Foss said in a statement.

They are part of the most significant reform of financial market regulation in a generation.

The bill was aimed at "creating confident and informed investors and fair, efficient and transparent financial markets," he said.

"These regulations will provide the detail needed to fully implement key aspects of the Bill," said Foss.

They included permitting new forms of capital raising, such as peron-to-person lending and crowd-funding.

Also included were details on making disclosure documents more useful and accessible to retail investors, governance rules for managed funds and licensing criteria for fund managers, discretionary investment management services and derivatives issuers.

"Regulation needs to work for both issuers and investors. Investors must have accessible and useful information to make informed decisions and must be confident that their investments will be well-governed," said Foss. Endi

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