EXPLANATION OF FSCA GENERAL NOTICE 1 OF 2022 - EXEMPTION ON SIGNIFICANT OWNERS
The FSCA recently posted the abovementioned notice. When reading it the average person, or even professional, will find it hard to understand what they are trying to convey. We simplify and explain it for you.
Some background info: this is one of the items the FIC and our government needed to fix to ensure we do not get Grey Listed as a country. They are also busy ensuring other kinds of businesses are also classified as accountable institutions in terms of FICA (new additions will be credit providers, crypto exchanges, co-operative banks and high value goods dealers to name a few - more on this in our next post). The notice is complex because you have to refer to 2 notices (the original Joint Standard of 2020 and the exemption general notice 3 of 2020) and 2 pieces of legislation (FAIS Act and FSR Act) to understand it.
”In short - the notice only puts in place the legislation to allow the FSCA to ask for the information of significant owners of FSPs.”
One has to read the content very carefully - it only exempts FSPs from the requirement to prove competence and financial standing of significant owners. They will still need to do other things the original joint standard of 2020 requires of significant owners (such as disclosure thereof etc). Banks, insurers and CIS managers must do all that FSP's have to do but also prove competence and financial standing of SO's.
In short - the notice only puts in place the legislation to allow the FSCA to ask for the information of significant owners of FSPs. The mechanism with which they will require us to submit is still to be seen. I am guessing this will be asked with license applications and in future and perhaps they will require FSP's to upload it onto the e-Portal (or the compliance reports) , however that is just conjecture on my part. The actual submission requirement has not been announced yet.
We will, however, potentially start to ask for it in our future compliance audits next year as a means to ensure our clients and so they are ready when the time comes.
