In the past few years the buzz word in almost any business industry has been compliance and how it relates to your business. The significance of compliance is to ensure adherence with the many legislation we have in the country and also to ensure that there is sufficient protection of the general public against major corporations.

Say you have decided to open your own business and have had it registered at the CIPC and now have to deal with the day to day running of the business. To ensure survival of your business’ one of the many things that you have to take into account would be compliance. A lot of business owners view compliance as an unnecessary added expensive on the business as they may be required to retain services of an attorney or other professional for assistance in this regard. Unfortunately this is absolutely necessary. In this edition we look at the most pressing pieces of legislation that you need to be aware of as a business owner mostly because failure to comply comes with very heavy penalties.

• Consumer Protection Act (CPA):

The purpose of this legislation is to promote fair, accessible and a sustainable market place for consumer products and to establish national norms and standards relating to consumer protection. This includes providing remedies and guidelines for best practice for businesses in terms of how they access their clients (telemarketing etc.) and how they deal with their client’s complaints (whether there is complaints procedure in place).

• Protection of Personal Information Bill (POPI):

This piece of legislation promotes the protection of personal information processed by public and private bodies and it introduces certain conditions so as to establish minimum requirements for the processing of personal information. One of the many emphases in this legislation is that clients that submit their personal information to a business need to be made aware of the reasons for the processing of this information. Further, any information ascertain from a client may not be used for any other reason accept for the reason for which it was attained. Failure to comply with this legislation may result in a fine of up to 10 million rands or imprisonment of up to 10 years.

• Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA):

The purpose of FICA is to prevent money laundering. According to Andrew Taylor of LexNove, FICA requires that certain types of businesses such as investment institutions know their clients (KYC). FICA also sets out various requirements for different types of institutions that need to be adhered to. Failure to comply could result in a fine of 10 million rands and or imprisonment.

• Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act (FAIS):

If your business includes rendering financial services to natural or legal persons then you need to be aware of this piece of legislation as it regulates the financial services industry.

Obviously this is not complete information on any of the above mentioned legislation and services from a professional consultant will have to be retained for further advice and assistance.