Dove, hawk, or just Swedish? Anna Breman prepares to take the Reserve Bank reins
Friday, 26 September 2025
ANALYSIS: Hopes are high that the Reserve Bank is about to turn the page on a period of turmoil, following the announcement that Dr Anna Breman, deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, will take on the role of governor in December.
And why not have optimism? Based on the bank’s current predictions, by the time Breman oversees her first monetary policy meeting on February 17, the central bank should be through the worst of the current economic troubles.
According to its forecasts, Stats NZ will have just reported that inflation has dropped back to 2.7% and unemployment has fallen for the first time in five years.
Dove or hawk?
Like most top central bankers, Breman doesn’t fit neatly into either category and isn’t prone to dramatic statements.
At the press conference hosted by Finance Minister Nicola Willis announcing her appointment on Wednesday, Breman stressed that the Reserve Bank’s key focus must remain low and stable inflation over the medium term — because without that, strong growth and good employment are unlikely.
Those words could have come from any existing monetary policy committee member at any time, but sounded slightly more meaningful coming from the bank’s first female governor-in-waiting in a faint Scandinavian accent.
For what it’s worth, since joining the Riksbank in 2019, Breman has always sided with the more dovish members on interest rate votes and, on all but one occasion (her very first vote), with the majority.
That included approving a 25 basis-point cut to Sweden’s Official Cash Rate to 1.75% in a 4-1 vote on Monday.
If the Reserve Bank’s forecasts are correct, the OCR here will barely need to move for the three years following her start date in Wellington anyway.
The timing of her arrival in December could hardly be better. The central bank should by then have completed the restructure triggered by its 25% budget cut, making it a fortuitous moment to take the reins.
A taste of Scandinavia
On Wednesday, Breman acknowledged her outsider status while gently plugging her credentials and hinting at a desire for greater transparency at the Reserve Bank.
The Riksbank and the RBNZ have similar mandates and both target a 2% midpoint for inflation.
Both publish forecasts for the future track of the OCR, though the Riksbank also reveals “who said what” at monetary policy meetings — a transparency Breman has praised. Should that approach ever be adopted here, it would mark a significant change from the current anonymity that Monetary Policy Committee members have.
She received the warmest welcome from anti-monopoly campaigner Tex Edwards, who hopes her appointment signals that Scandinavian-style progressiveness is about to permeate New Zealand institutions more generally.
Edwards called it an “outrageously positive” breath of fresh air, noting Sweden’s lead in open banking and saying mortgage interest rate margins there are half those in New Zealand.
“When Dr Anna Breman has finished reforming New Zealand banking, we’d welcome her Scandinavian colleagues to help fix competition law, social housing, electricity, supermarket food distribution, and aviation,” Edwards cheered.
A different model
It should be noted, however, that a big difference between the Riksbank and the Reserve Bank is that the former does not directly supervise commercial banks; that role in Sweden falls to the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, Finansinspektionen.
In recent decades, commentators have sometimes suggested New Zealand faces a choice between Scandinavian-style social democracy or a Singaporean free-market model.
So it is perhaps ironic that a National-led government is now bringing a Swedish touch to public policy.
Breman will no doubt stay in her lane, but it can’t hurt to have an economist with experience in a country at the centre of that debate in an influential role.
Ultimately, any broader insights into what New Zealand could learn from Scandinavian economic and public policy might prove just as interesting as the bank’s OCR decisions — if the forecasts are right that we are about to enter a period of monetary policy stability.