Tag: financial crime

Strengthening digital verification methods in financial services is essential to combat fraud, ensure regulatory compliance, and enhance customer trust in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. Digital onboarding and real-time transactions are key to delivering a slick customer experience for financial services today. However, this open trading world has created gaps for financial criminals, including money launderers, terrorist financiers, and fraudsters, to exploit.

South African Revenue Service (SARS) and the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) have joined forces. Their collaboration targets financial crimes, including tax-related offences. This partnership aims to bolster efforts to make tax non-compliance both difficult and costly.

Despite higher inflation, interest rates and cost of living, the South African insurances market experienced a revival during the last two years, with the gross written premium across the local insurances market expected to show an annual growth rate of 5.14% from 2024 to 2028 (CAGR 2024-2028), achieving a market volume of US$100.30 billion by 2028.

Despite being viewed as an administrative and burdensome expense with excessive paperwork sometimes causing potential delays to establishing business relationships and concluding transactions, Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) compliance is more crucial than ever.

As a global leader in the cryptocurrency industry, we recognise the significance of the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority's (FSCA) recent decision to include cryptocurrencies within its licensing legislation. This move comes at a crucial time for the evolution of crypto as an investment asset class in South Africa, signalling the maturation of the local crypto market and a step towards integrating digital assets into the mainstream investment ecosystem.

Know Your Customer. This phrase is a focal point of modern financial regulations, particularly concerning anti-fraud and anti-money laundering requirements. But KYC is even more valuable for managing risks with bad customers, speeding up transactions, and getting more business on the books.

In a matter of seconds, it is possible to hold your phone up to your face and see what you will look like in 40 years. Or, you could fuse the image of your face with that of a celebrity. You could even record a birthday song for a friend in the voice of their favourite artist.

South Africa has been enlisted on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) dreaded “Grey List” for over four months – fortunately, though, the country has not been standing still. Significant new provisions are shaking up the corporate landscape and by comprehensively implementing stricter controls, the country can transition more quickly from the Grey List to the coveted “Whitelist.”

New designated items listed as accountable institutions in Schedule 1 of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) are urged to continue registering with the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) even after the deadline of close of business on Monday, 20 March 2023, to avoid being in non-compliance with the registration requirements.

In a recent newsletter, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that South Africa knows what needs to be done to be removed from the greylist and that the fundamentals are in place. Eight areas of strategic deficiency have been identified by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which government needs to urgently address in order to get off the greylist.