I actually laughed at that. Every bank here is the same and we supposedly have some of the safest banks in the world. Im limited to an 8 character password, and the other banks here are little better. New Zealand.

Really? I've been impressed with Kiwibank's balancing security and usability. Rabobank NZ have two factor authentication too.

Of course if you're with one of the four majors, well... they're owned by Australians, what did you expect?

It's safe in NZ because even with access to your internet banking, a thief can only transfer money to another NZ account and they're fairly reliable at verifying the identities of account holders.

Which bank are you with? Having had accounts with 4 major banks here (Kiwibank, ANZ, Westpac, ASB), I can confirm that you are allowed passwords more than 8 characters. Also, several of them offer a second protection level for logging in.

ASB. How did you get a long password? It just deleted the characters at the end when I tried (6 months ago).