In short
An accountable institution is a business listed in Schedule 1 to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The Act defines it as nothing more than a person referred to in that Schedule, so there is no application, assessment or certificate — you are one the moment your business falls within an item. Schedule 1 item 11, added with effect from 19 December 2022, covers credit providers under the National Credit Act at paragraph (a), and at paragraph (b) anyone providing credit under agreements excluded from that Act by section 4(1)(a) or (b). Those are the juristic-person exclusions, so lending to companies, bodies corporate and qualifying trusts is caught even though the National Credit Act is not.
You hear it constantly: we are an accountable institution now. It sounds like a credential — something achieved, awarded, displayed on a website. It is not.
An accountable institution is simply a business that appears on a list. The list is Schedule 1 to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. If your business is on it, you are one — whether or not you have noticed. For most lenders that turns on whether you are a credit provider, and on who you lend to.
01 — What it meansA status, not an award
This matters because it reverses the usual order. With most regulation you apply, you are approved, and then the rules apply to you. Here the rules apply first, and the paperwork is you catching up.
02 — The important partAlmost every private lender is one
Schedule 1 was widened on 19 December 2022 as part of South Africa's anti-money-laundering reforms. Item 11 was added, and it has two paragraphs. The second one is the one nobody talks about.
| Schedule 1, item 11 | Who it catches |
|---|---|
| (a) A person carrying on the business of a credit provider as defined in the National Credit Act | Registered credit providers. Anyone lending where the Act applies. |
| (b) A person carrying on the business of providing credit under agreements excluded from the National Credit Act by section 4(1)(a) or (b) | Everyone lending to businesses outside the Act — companies, close corporations, bodies corporate, qualifying trusts. The lenders who thought they were outside the perimeter. |
If you lend to bodies corporate, to property developers, to companies against invoices or equipment — the kind of lending that sits outside the National Credit Act — item 11(b) is about you.
03 — What followsFive duties, none optional
Being an accountable institution brings obligations that start immediately and do not stop.
| Duty | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Register with the Centre | You must register with the Financial Intelligence Centre. That is a separate registration, on top of any you hold with the National Credit Regulator. |
| Have a written programme | A Risk Management and Compliance Programme. It is the document that decides what your other duties look like, because the Act expresses them by reference to it. |
| Know your client | Establish and verify who your borrower is. Where someone acts for another, verify that other person and their authority too. |
| Report suspicion | Report transactions you know or ought reasonably to have suspected involve the proceeds of unlawful activity or have no apparent lawful purpose. |
| Train and keep records | Train the people who do the work, and keep records in a form that can be inspected. |
Registering with the Financial Intelligence Centre is not the same as registering as a credit provider with the National Credit Regulator. A lender outside the National Credit Act may have no NCR registration at all and still be required to register with the Centre.
The reporting duty is wider than the rest
Section 29 binds any business and the people in it, not only accountable institutions. And the test is objective: knows or ought reasonably to have known or suspected.
Not having asked is not a defence. A lender who took a large cash repayment without wondering where it came from cannot rely on not having wondered.
04 — Where it fitsThree regimes, three questions
FICA sits alongside the other two laws that reach private lending, and each asks something different. It is worth seeing them together, because a lender can pass one and fail another.
| The law | Its question | Does being outside one help? |
|---|---|---|
| National Credit Act | Are you registered, and are your terms lawful? | — |
| FICA | Do you know who you are dealing with, and do you report what you should? | No. Being outside the National Credit Act puts you inside FICA under item 11(b) |
| Banks Act | Whose money are you lending? | No. Independent of both |
The wider map is at when the law applies, and what the National Credit Act does once it reaches a loan is at understanding the National Credit Act.
05 — Other people in the chainWho else is on the list
Item 11 is not the only entry that touches private lending. Several of the people around a transaction are accountable institutions in their own right, which is why they ask you for documents.
- Banks, under item 6 — the business of a bank as defined in the Banks Act.
- Attorneys and trust administrators, under items 1 and 2, including those administering trust property.
- Estate agents, under item 3.
- Financial advisers who need a FAIS licence to advise on investments, under item 12.
- Dealers in high-value goods, under item 20, where payment of R100 000 or more is received.
So when a conveyancer or a bank asks you for identity documents on a transaction, they are not being difficult. They carry the same duty you do.
06 — If this is new to youThe honest first steps
- Work out whether item 11 catches you. If you lend to businesses at all, assume it does until advised otherwise.
- Check whether you are registered with the Centre. Separate from any NCR registration.
- Find out whether you have a Risk Management and Compliance Programme. Not whether you have a policy somewhere — whether you have that document.
- Get advice if the answer to any of these is no. This is a supervised regime with administrative sanctions, and the exposure is not theoretical.
07 — The boundaryWhat this page does not decide
Whether a particular business falls within a Schedule 1 item, what its programme should contain, and what its reporting obligations look like in practice are questions of fact and of compliance advice.
FICA has been amended repeatedly, most substantially in 2017 and again in 2022, and the Centre issues guidance and directives that sit alongside the Act. Work from the current consolidated text and the Centre's own guidance rather than from any summary, including this one.