We are an accountable institution in terms of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) which places firm obligations on us. We are prohibited from entering into a single transaction or business relationship with an anonymous client or a client with an apparent false or fictitious name. We therefore need to conduct customer due diligence (CDD) to establish and verify the identity of our clients in accordance with the requirements of the FIC Act.
Yes they do. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) leads global action to tackle money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing. Over 200 jurisdictions around the world have committed to the FATF Recommendations and implemented legislative measures similar to our Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA).
Beneficial Ownership comes into play where there is a legal entity like a company or trust. The Beneficial Owners it the person(s) who ultimately own and control or benefit from the relevant entity. In terms of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) a beneficial owner is defined as:
Trends indicate that criminals often abuse legal persons, trusts, and partnerships to obscure the ownership or control of funds derived from illegal activities or intended to be used for illegal activities. Criminals do this by creating different levels of ownership which makes it difficult to identify the ultimate beneficial owner of the legal person, trust, and partnership. Certain legal persons, trusts or partnerships are more vulnerable to being abused by criminals because of the way they are structured or because of their characteristics. It is therefore legally required by accountable institutions (like us) to identify the natural person/s that own or control clients that are legal persons, trusts and partnerships and ultimately benefit from the funds owned or controlled by these legal persons, trusts, and partnerships.
Section 21 of FICA and FIC Guidance Note 7 provide guidelines on customer due diligence (CDD) or what is commonly referred to as providing FICA documentation.
Yes. If you act on behalf of a non-natural person such as a company or trust, additional documents will be requested in order to verify the identity of the client, as well as the identity of the Beneficial Owner(s).
Section 21E of the FIC Act prohibits accountable institutions from entering into or maintaining business relationships or concluding single transactions if they cannot perform the required CDD in accordance with the provisions of the FIC Act. Should you therefore refuse to provide the requested information, we are obliged to terminate our relationship with you and we may have to consider filing a suspicious activity report with FIC.
The Compliance Team may have sent a more recent onboarding email, which means that any older links will no longer be valid. Please check that you click on the link in the latest email received. If in doubt, please contact our Compliance Team.
The onboarding email will have been sent from fica@phinc.co.za. Also check in your junk mail/spam folder. If you still cannot find it, please contact our Compliance Team to make an alternative arrangement.
The first step is to click ‘resend OTP’. If this does not work, try the following:
Please follow the instructions in the Onboarding Questionnaire. Here are a few guidance points:
The onboarding will commence on receipt of your instructions and has to be finalised before any products or services are rendered to you.
Our service provider in respect of client onboarding is DocFox Africa. DocFox Africa seeks to ensure the quality, accuracy and confidentiality of all personal information in its possession and recognises the importance of protecting all users’ privacy in respect of the personal information collected by DocFox Africa. DocFox Africa’s Privacy Policy can be accessed here: https://docfox.co.za/privacy-policy/