On the 26th of April this year, the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Act was signed in to law by the president and as a result it was enacted by the Minister of Finance on the 2nd of May.
What you need to know is that the Act imposed new obligations on accountable institutions, including all estate agencies. These obligations have been implemented to combat crimes such as money laundering and the funding of terrorist organisations.
An important obligation which comes into effect today (2nd October 2017) requires that every accountable institution must develop, document, maintain and implement a Risk Management and Compliance Programme (“RMCP”) which will replace the internal rules currently need to be formulated and implemented by accountable institutions.
The RMCP is a company policy implemented in which the accountable institution sets out how it will go about ensuring that it fulfils its obligation to identify, assess, monitor, mitigate and manage the risk that the services or products offered by that institution may be used to carry out the crime of money laundering or the financing of terrorist activities.
The accountable institution’s RMCP must set out the manner in which the institution will go about meeting the obligations under the Act.