30 November 2022
The Schedules in the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, 2001 (Act 38 of 2001) (FIC Act) were amended with changes coming into effect from 19 December 2022.
The changes will significantly increase the number of sectors included as accountable institutions in Schedule 1 to the FIC Act.
Additional sectors will improve the FIC’s ability to obtain information concerning the financial activities of customers from a wider range of financial, non-financial institutions, and crypto asset service providers (CASPs). Furthermore, this will enrich and help augment the quality of financial intelligence reports the FIC provides to law enforcement, supervisory bodies, and policy formulating entities.
This will enhance anti-money laundering, combating the financing of terrorism and countering proliferation financing (AML/CFT/CPF) supervision and monitoring.
High-value goods dealers as a category of accountable institutions, items under Schedule 3 to the FIC Act are now moved to Schedule 1.
Requirements on affected entities:
The new sectors will be required to register with the FIC as accountable institutions and fulfil certain regulatory obligations. These include implementing customer identification and verification, customer due diligence, appointing a compliance officer, training employees on FIC Act compliance and ML/TF/PF risk exposure, undertaking business risk assessments for ML/TF/PF, and maintaining and implementing a risk management and compliance programme.
Accountable institutions are also required to file regulatory reports relating to suspicious and unusual transactions, cash transactions exceeding the prescribed threshold and on property that is linked to sanctioned persons, terrorist activity or terrorist organisations.
Transitional supervisory approach
In the first 18 months from the date of commencement of the amendments, the FIC and supervisory bodies will focus on entrenching the FIC Act risk and compliance provisions and implementation among the new sectors in Schedule 1 to the FIC Act.
You can read the Media release here.
