FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE: INPUT SOUGHT ON DRAFT SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE GUIDELINES

FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE: INPUT SOUGHT ON DRAFT SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE GUIDELINES

• 03 March 2026
• Financial Sector
• SA Legal Academy

The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) has published and called for input by 16 March 2026 on a draft public compliance communication providing guidance to special purpose vehicles that are accountable institutions. In terms of Item 11 of the 2001 FIC Act’s Schedule 1, these are persons in the business of ‘lending money against the security of securities’.

In the context of the guidelines envisaged:

• the term ‘special purpose vehicle’ refers to ‘any juristic person, trust, partnership or other legal arrangement established as a legally distinct entity, structure or vehicle for a specific, limited or ring‑fenced objective or purposes, that normally has its own assets, liabilities, and legal status separate from its forming parent institution or entity’
• a special purpose vehicle ‘may include an issuer special purpose institution … or similar entity used in securitisation, asset‑backed funding, risk transfer, repackaging, or structured finance transactions, which is bankruptcy‑remote, has restricted objects, and is prohibited from conducting business outside its defined mandate’, and that
• once finalised the guidelines will apply to:
  • ‘passive’ special purpose vehicles that may not use their own staff to achieve their objectives, execute their operational functions and perform independent operational activities (relying on ‘the parent or linked entity/company that created it’), and
  • operative special purpose vehicles with the operational capacity conduct their own business functions.

Against that backdrop, the draft communication seeks to:

• provide clarity on the interpretation of that is deemed a special purposes vehicle under the Act
• ‘confirm the … (FIC’s) position regarding special purpose vehicles’, and
• ‘outline how these entities may consolidate their reporting and compliance obligations while ensuring continued compliance with the … Act’.

Please click the links below for more details:

• draft communication
• notice
• Act, updated (SAFLII)

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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