Draft CBR Reports Published for Comment

The FSCA finally published drafts of their new compliance reports and in line with all things bureaucratic decided to call them Conduct of Business Reports or CBR for short. This report seems like it will attempt to enable all financial institutions ranging from Banks to one-man run FSPs to fill it in. It will do this by changing the content of the report depending on the input of the person filling it in.

At first glance the report seems broken as certain fields do not work and some of the auto selection an population content does not activate when it should. What we can see at this stage is that the information asked for is copious and some of it does not seem related to aspects of legislation.

The content was informed by overseas regulators in western developed nations. Although this is a good base to start from, one must significantly adapt as we are not a western developed nation. We must still develop and overregulation will not get us there. Our President recently embarked on a campaign of cutting red tape to enhance business creation and operation. I do not think this complex reporting approach is in line with this goal.

Much more action and responsibility needs to be taken by the authorities when malfeasance is brought to their attention instead of placing a heavy regulatory reporting burden on financial services providers. And in these economic times there is even less breathing space for businesses as it is. We'll publish our comments via our industry bodies in line with this approach but please feel free to comment on your own as well or via your industry bodies.

Their documentation states that they will only commence Phase 2 of the Consultation in Q1 2023 and that first reporting will likely only start in 2024.

There are workshops on the CBR reports and we will attend them on your behalf but anyone can attend them and voice their opinions if they’d like. Please see the links and documents at the end of this post.

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Their documentation states that they will only commence Phase 2 of the Consultation Process in Q1 2023 and that first reporting will likely only start in 2024.

Written comments must be submitted via the secure FSCA “Comments” portal, available on the FSCA website under Home > Regulated Entities > E-services or by clicking here. The comments template is web-based and is available for completion by any individual on behalf of a licensed financial institution or industry association.

The “Comments” portal will only be available from 10 June 2022 and all written comments must be submitted by 10 August 2022. The portal will be closed for any further submissions after this date.

Workshops can be booked for here:
Large FSPs (turnover >R5)
Smaller FSPs (turnover <R5m)

For more information about this Communication please contact Ms Juanita Smit at Juanita.Smit@fsca.co.za and copy FSCA_Omni_CBR_Comments@fsca.co.za

You can download the FSCA documents here and here.