Reserve Bank fines Capitec R28m and Ninety One R6m over FICA controls
The penalties follow 2023 inspections and a larger R56 million Capitec fine in December 2024, and they land as regulators keep auditing the banks after South Africa left the global greylist.
Capitec Bank has been fined R28 million and Ninety One Assurance R6 million for falling short of the controls South African law requires them to run against money laundering and terrorist financing.
The South African Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority announced the administrative sanctions on Friday 11 September, following inspections carried out in 2023 under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, known as FICA. Of Capitec’s R28 million, R5,5 million is conditionally suspended for 36 months.
As The South African reported on 16 September, the two penalties together come to R34 million. The facts of the enforcement are not in dispute. What follows is what the sanctions actually mean, and what a South African reader should take from them.
What the regulator found
At Capitec, inspectors found the bank had not done enough customer due diligence on the client files they sampled. That covers the checks a bank is legally required to run on who its customers are, what they use an account for, and how that changes over time.
The Prudential Authority also flagged inadequate ongoing staff training, and weaknesses in the bank’s wider risk management and compliance programme. Those weaknesses included how the bank reports terrorist property and how it screens clients against financial sanctions lists.
The Ninety One penalty of R6 million relates to the same FICA framework. Ninety One Assurance is the life insurance arm of Ninety One, the asset manager that was spun out of Investec in 2020 and listed on the JSE.
Both institutions said they cooperated fully with the Prudential Authority and have since put remedial action in place to close the gaps identified.
This is the second Capitec penalty in two years
The R28 million is not Capitec’s first. In December 2024 the bank was fined R56 million over earlier inspections covering 2017 to 2022. Capitec is the country’s largest bank by customer numbers, which is why its compliance record carries weight beyond its own balance sheet.
It matters that these are administrative penalties, not criminal sanctions. They are not a finding that money laundering took place at either institution. They reflect the regulator’s assessment that the internal controls the law requires were not strong enough.
That distinction is the one most likely to be lost in the retelling, and it is the one that matters most to account holders.
What it means for your money
Nothing about your Capitec account or your Ninety One policy is unsafe because of this. Funds are not at risk, and no account has been frozen. The fines are paid by the institutions, not by customers.
What customers will notice over time is friction at the counter and on the app. Stricter customer due diligence means more requests for an identity document, proof of address, or an explanation of where a deposit came from. Banks under regulatory pressure tend to ask for those things more often, not less.
South Africa was placed on the Financial Action Task Force greylist in 2023 over weaknesses in its money-laundering controls, and exited it in October last year. The Prudential Authority has kept auditing major institutions since then to test whether the fixes are genuine and lasting. More penalties across more institutions are likely while that work continues.
Where the story goes next
The suspended R5,5 million of Capitec’s penalty falls away only if the bank meets the conditions attached to it over the next 36 months. If it does not, the regulator can call that money in. The Prudential Authority has not published a closing date for its current round of inspections.
Source: The South African, Capitec hit with FICA Fines: What does this mean for your money?
