FINANCIAL SECTOR REGULATION: COFI BILL STILL NOT TABLED IN PARLIAMENT

FINANCIAL SECTOR REGULATION: COFI BILL STILL NOT TABLED IN PARLIAMENT

• 25 August 2026
• Financial Sector
• SA Legal Academy

More than four months have passed since a pre-tabling explanatory summary of the Conduct of Financial Institutions (COFI) Bill was gazetted as a routine procedural requirement. Yet this long-awaited piece of proposed new legislation has still not been tabled in Parliament. Neither has it been submitted in terms of Joint Rule 201 for planning and information purposes.

A 17 April 2026 Webber Wentzel article referring to an explanatory summary ‘announcing the Bill’s formal introduction in the National Assembly’ is therefore misleading. The Bill has definitely not been tabled. It is in that context that SA Legal Academy Policy Watch provides this update on its status.

Cabinet’s approval of the COFI Bill’s readiness for tabling in Parliament was announced in a 2 April 2026 media statement on two successive Cabinet meetings: one ordinary, one special. This followed a lengthy public consultation process begun with the release of a draft Bill in December 2018 for public comment. A revised version was published in September 2020 for a second round of stakeholder input.

Cabinet approved both the COFI Bill and the General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering & Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Bill during the same two successive Cabinet meetings. On 17 April 2026 the General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering & Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Bill’s explanatory summary was gazetted – and ten days later the Bill was formally introduced in the National Assembly. Parliamentary hearings have since been conducted by the committee concerned.

The COFI Bill’s explanatory summary was also gazetted 17 April 2026 – but not as an official announcement of its formal introduction in the National Assembly, as the Webber Wenzel article claims. A Bill’s procedurally required pre-tabling explanatory summary simply announces a Minister’s intention to formally introduce that Bill in Parliament.

During recent years, explanatory summaries have been used increasingly by opposition party MPs preparing private members’ Bills to simultaneously call for public comments on their envisaged contents. However, they have never been used to announce the tabling of a Bill.

As SA Legal Academy has already reported, once formally introduced in Parliament, passed, enacted and operationalised the COFI Bill will add another cornerstone to the foundations of government’s ‘twin peaks’ financial sector regulatory reform system. According to the Cabinet media statement announcing its approval, ‘twin peaks’ ‘splits financial supervision … (between) two distinct authorities: the Prudential Authority for safety and soundness, and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority for market conduct and consumer protection’.

It is in that context that the statement listed its overarching objectives, which are to:

• ‘ensure fair customer treatment’
• ‘enhance transformation’ (among other things by requiring financial institutions to have broad-based black economic empowerment code compliance policies in place), and to
• ‘support market development and competition by enabling a differentiated approach to licensing’ with the aim of fostering the entry of new market players (financial technology being one example).

As soon as the Bill has been tabled in Parliament, SA Legal Academy will publish an article confirming this – with links to the parliamentary papers concerned as well as the Bill itself.

• 17 April 2026 SA Legal Academy report (including links to the COFI Bill’s explanatory summary and the Cabinet media statement)
• 17 April 2026 Webber Wentzel article

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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