Financial Intelligence Centre ACT - Amendment

FICA was adopted in 2001 and has since been amended a number of times to ensure that South Africa’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regulatory regime is in line with international standards as set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and reflects South Africa’s continued commitment to combating money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF).

In November 2022, the South African Parliament amended the Schedules in FICA. The amendments relate to the classification of accountable institutions listed in Schedule 1, supervisory bodies listed in Schedule 2, and reporting institutions listed in Schedule 3 of FICA.

In terms of Schedule 1, the changes will increase the number of businesses included as Accountable Institutions resulting in those businesses now having to comply with FICA. This will have an operational impact on those newly classified businesses since there are identification, validation, monitoring and reporting obligations which they must now comply with.

High Level Obligation Overview 

FICA requires Accountable Institutions to fulfil certain regulatory obligations. Below, we have provided a summary of the obligations which are required in order to achieve compliance with FICA:  

What to do next

Should you be unsure as to whether or not you are required to comply with FICA, we suggest the following:

Deloitte can advise you on your compliance strategy and we also offer an outsourced onboarding compliance solution which provides customer identification and verification, customer due diligence and ongoing customer monitoring to enable reporting to the FIC.