As we draw the curtain on what can best be described as an upside-down year, the FSCA, like the rest of the world, has had to quickly adjust to a new way of doing business. As we reflect on the way we’ve conducted our work over the past few months it’s pleasing to see that we’ve managed to do so with excellence and agility. An incredible amount of work has gone into ensuring that even with all the changes we’ve had to make, the conduct of the financial services sector remains properly supervised.

In this edition we touch on the issue of prescribed assets in the retirement space, as well as the Draft Declaration of crypto assets as a financial product under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act. These are two of the topics that made headlines in this quarter. The Draft Declaration is intended to be an interim step in mitigating certain immediate risks in the crypto assets environment, pending the outcome of broader developments currently taking place through the Crypto Assets Regulatory Working Group (CAR WG). The outcomes of this working group will inform future policy interventions in this space.

We’ve also had a flurry of enforcement activity that kept our teams very busy – we bring you some updates on that front as well as updates on why cheques will no longer be used in the national payment system from 31 December 2020.

We have all this and more prepared for you in this issue, and as always, we welcome your feedback as we seek to give you even better content in 2021!

Tembisa