CONDUCT OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS BILL: CLARITY & UPDATE

CONDUCT OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS BILL: CLARITY & UPDATE

• 15 September 2025
• Financial Sector
• SA Legal Academy

Recently, certain online publications have published misleading articles about the long-promised, yet-to-be-tabled Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill.

On 8 September 2025, in BizNews, Dorothy Avvakoumides wrote about ‘a new piece of legislation called the Cofi bill’ (the Bill is still in draft form and is a proposed new piece of legislation yet to be approved by Cabinet for tabling).

An undated article by Lizl Budhram in MSN’s Business Report referred to ‘the soon-to-be-enacted Conduct of Financial Institutions (COFI) Bill’ (which cannot be ‘enacted’ until it has been processed by Parliament, signed into law and operationalised with the necessary regulations). According to the article, Budram is ‘head of advice at Old Mutual Personal Finance’. Perhaps she missed an earlier undated article in the same publication penned by Siphelele Dludla, apparently published three months earlier and clearly stating that ‘following a series of delays that initially pushed the tabling of the Bill in Parliament to January, the FSCA announced on Monday that it is now set to submit the Bill to Cabinet for approval soon’. Given that we are now fast-approaching the December 2025/January 2026 parliamentary recess, could the eventually approved revised Bill’s tabling be deferred to next year?

First released in December 2018 for public comment, at the time it was envisaged (and presumably still is) that – once finalised for tabling in Parliament – the draft Bill would seek to ‘provide for the establishment of a consolidated, comprehensive and consistent regulatory framework for the conduct of financial institutions’ that would, among other things:

• ‘protect’ and ‘promote the fair treatment’ of financial customers
• ‘support fair, transparent and efficient financial markets’
• promote:
  • ‘innovation and the development of and investment in innovative technologies, processes and practices’
  • ‘trust and confidence in the financial sector’
  • ‘sustainable competition in the provision of financial products and financial services’
  • financial inclusion
  • financial sector transformation
• ‘assist the South African Reserve Bank in maintaining financial stability’
• provide for:
  • ‘the application and supervision of requirements for the conduct of financial institutions’
  • ‘the licensing of financial institutions and the authorisation of representatives’, and
• provide for and empower the authorities concerned to prescribe the requirements and associated conduct standards for:
  • financial institution ‘culture and governance’
  • financial products
  • financial services
  • promotion, marketing and disclosure
  • distribution, advice and discretionary investment management
  • post-sale barriers and obligations
  • safeguarding assets and operational procedures
  • reporting, and
  • remedial action.

The Bill’s ‘slightly updated’ second draft was published on the National Treasury website in September 2020, along with a media statement and stakeholder response document explaining the changes made. No further iterations of the draft Bill or associated media statements have been released.

• MSN Business Report article (Budram)
• MSN Business Report article (Dludla)
• 2018 draft Bill
• 2020 revised draft Bill
• 2020 National Treasury media statement
• accompanying stakeholder response document

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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