Financial Services Board to deal more harshly with non-compliance

The Financial Services Board (FSB) is gearing up to crack the whip harder on industry players that fail to comply with legislation. Speaking at the annual Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) conference in Cape Town today, the FSB’s Head of

Research has shown that violators obtain an economic benefit from breaking the law by delaying or avoiding compliance, or by achieving an illegal competitive advantage.

“It cannot be business as usual when offenders get away with non-compliance, there must be serious consequences. We want to now ensure that we not only remove the economic benefit derived from non-compliance, but that we also institute a further gravity penalty. This will take into account the severity of the non-compliance and will act as a further deterrent to offenders,” said Mr Thulare.

The enforcement unit of the FSB has been in existence for 17 months. Mr Thulare told the conference that significant progress has been made in this period in ensuring that the regulated community takes compliance more seriously.