With the latest updates to FICA, the Financial Intelligence Centre and the Estate Agents Affairs Board has begun to carry out FICA audits on estate agents around the country.
Follow these 5 simple steps to pass your FICA audit with flying colours ...
Step
1: Have a Risk Management and Compliance Programme in place
One of the most crucial aspects of FICA
compliance is the implementation of a Risk Management and Compliance Programme
(RMCP). This is an official company document that contains the agency’s company
policies that will allow them to identify, assess, monitor, mitigate and manage
the risk that their agency will be used by unscrupulous individuals to carry
out crimes such as money laundering.
The RMCP is a document that must be signed
into force by the principal of the agency and must be made available to all
employees.
A template RMCP is available to download in
the LeasePack at the TPN Shop.
Step
2: Know Your Client
FICA requires that an accountable
institution must not continue a business relationship unless the accountable
institution has verified the identity of their client. In the case of an estate
agent, that is the buyer, seller, landlord or tenant.
In the past, getting to know your client
was as simple as a copy of ID and proof of address and that was your obligation
completed - that is no longer the case!
With the introduction of the amended FICA
Act, a greater obligation and level of risk has been placed on the agency to
make sure that in addition to the collection of these documents, they identify
the source of the funds for higher risk individuals.
TPN has recently launched the ‘Know Your
Client’ enquiry that takes the stress out of the process by accessing verified
information, online and in real time through the National Population Register. If
your client passes the TPN KYC enquiry, FIC will be satisfied that you have fully
met this obligation.
Step
3: Correct document storage
Once you have collected the information on
your clients, the question that the FIC auditor will be asking you is: ‘how are
you storing the information?’
You must store it in a manner so that it
cannot be accessed by the general public. In practice, this means that the documents
must be kept in an area of the office that is not entered by the clients and
kept in locked cabinets.
The Act and your RMCP may also make
provision for the documents to be kept digitally or in off-site storage,
however the agency still bears the risk in the event that any documents are
lost. This means that agencies should be very careful to have this information
backed up in at least one way and preferably multiple manners.
Step
4: Report suspicious activity
FICA speaks at great lengths about an
accountable institution’s obligations to identify risk, but once you have
identified that risk, what is your next step? Report the suspicious activity to
the Financial Intelligence Centre.
In addition to reporting suspicious
information, you are obligated to report any cash amounts received that are
greater than R24 999.
The FIC has made the process of reporting
extremely easy as it can all be done online at http://www.fic.gov.za
When the Financial Intelligence Centre
comes in to audit you, they will ask you for proof of the reports that have
been filed to the FIC. In the event that you do not accept any cash payments
and you have not witnessed any suspicious transactions, you may inform the
auditor that no reports have been filed.
Step
5: Train your employees
The accountable institution (or estate
agency) is responsible for providing on-going FICA training to all members of
staff on an annual basis or in the event of any changes in FICA-related legislation,
whichever of these come first.
The appointed responsible person must
ensure that the training of all employees is carried out. Also, should an
employee at any time have questions relating to FICA, FICA amended or any
policies of the accountable institution, the responsible person must be
available to hear these questions and supply suitable answers as soon as is
possible.
The TPN
FICA Training Manual, available as part of the in the LeasePack,
is an invaluable tool to simplify the requirement of internal and on-going training.
Passing your FICA audit should not be
something that causes you major stress! By following these 5 steps and with a
little help from friends at TPN, you will easily meet every necessary requirement.
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