Reserve bank fines Nedbank R35 million for failure to comply with FIC Act

R15 million of the fine has been conditionally suspended.

In a statement released on Friday, the reserve bank says the administrative sanctions and the penalty follows an inspection which was conducted in 2019 to check whether the bank complied with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.

The central bank says Nedbank failed to comply with its Risk Management and Compliance Programme.

 The bank also failed to provide evidence that its controls and oversight measures were able to extract the correct data that would allow it to accurately risk-rate its clients.

 “Nedbank failed to comply with its record-keeping obligations in terms of sections 22, 23 and 24 of the FIC Act,” said the SARB.

“Nedbank failed to comply with its cash threshold reporting obligations in terms of section 28 of the FIC Act in that it failed to report a significant number of cash transactions that exceeded the threshold of R24 999.99.”

“Nedbank failed to comply with section 42(2)(o) of the FIC Act and the Financial Intelligence Centre Directive 5/2019 in that it was unable to timeously determine when a transaction was reportable in terms of section 29 of the FIC Act,” they add.

 The reserve bank says Nedbank also failed to comply with its anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism governance-related obligations.

“It is important to highlight that there was no evidence of Nedbank being involved in or facilitating transactions involving money laundering or the financing of terrorism,” adds the central bank

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