FINANCIAL SECTOR: POLICY AND REGULATORY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PIPELINE

FINANCIAL SECTOR: POLICY AND REGULATORY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PIPELINE

• 04 August 2025
• Financial Sector
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: Regarding disaster risk financing, on 5 August 2025 National Treasury published the documents concerned: a disaster response financing strategy and an independent report on the experience of South African municipalities

Cloud computing and data offshoring

On 25 July 2025, the Financial Sector Conduct and Prudential Authorities published a joint communication alerting financial institutions to ‘measures that may be considered in terms of risk mitigation in the utilisation of cloud computing and/or the offshoring of data’.

According to the communication:

• this is noting the ‘important role’ played by a financial institution’s board of directors and senior management in the context of risk management and risk mitigation in a cloud computing and data offshoring environment, and
• the possible need for policy interventions and regulatory instruments focusing on ‘appropriate governance, strategy, resilience and risk management practices’.

Against that backdrop, the joint communication includes best practice recommendations.

With the aim of encouraging financial institutions to integrate cloud computing and/or data offshoring risks into their governance, risk management and reporting processes, the authorities intend augmenting their supervisory capability in order to monitor the approach adopted by each institution concerned.

Disaster risk insurance

On 1 August 2025, National Treasury issued a media statement announcing the release of two documents on enhancing South Africa’s approach to disaster risk insurance by better using private sector participation. This is noting that:

• ‘most public infrastructure is uninsured, placing a large contingent liability on the government’, and that
• South Africa’s ‘the non-life insurance markets … present a viable opportunity … to better manage (this situation) by transferring key risks off budget’.

Although at the time of writing the documents had not been made public, the media statement refers to a summary included in the March version of the 2025 Budget review (pages 70 and 71), which alludes to reforms to enhance the disaster risk financing framework – with insights from high-risk municipalities.

• FSCA-Prudential Authority joint communication
• National Treasury media statement
• March 2025 Budget review (the summary does not appear in the May 2025 version)

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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