CA, NBFIRA sign MoU for non-banking sector

BOITSHEPO MAJUBE
Correspodent | Monday May 13, 2013 00:00

The instrument also exists to ensure that cooperation and information exchange does not merely depend on personal relations, but rather long lasting institutionalised systems that outlive incumbent office holders. 'MoUs create a healthy culture of sharing information for the greater public interest and yes, enable a platform of serving our customers; that is Batswana, in a much more informed, efficient and purposeful manner by preventing duplication of efforts,' CA CEO Thula Kaira said at the signing of the MoU.He noted that the non-banking financial sector is a huge, diversified and complex industry that the CA can only imagine to understand.'The fact is that our colleagues at NBFIRA are experts in, for instance, the insurance industry, and we do look forward to learning from them how such industries work - their strengths and weaknesses - whenever we are dealing with cases pertaining to such sectors,' he said. He revealed that they have previously greatly benefitted from NBFIRA insight, adding that they trust that the MoU will enrich their staff and provide an open-door policy at both the authority and NBFIRA whenever in need of each other's expertise. He said the CA's concerns in the non-banking financial sector will likely be in connection with suspected cartels, abuse of dominance and anti-competitive mergers.

'We may also at some point carry out a competition study to understand the competition dynamics and their effect on growth of a particular relevant market falling within the non-bank financial sector,' Kaira noted. For his part, NBFIRA CEO Oaitse Ramasedi said the MoU is a monumental one in that it marks the establishment of formal supervisory relations between the Competition Authority and the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA). 'We began the process of establishing formal cooperation between the Competition Authority and the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority early this year and today's signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Competition Authority and the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority will be a culmination of that process,' he said. Ramasedi added that, as regulators, they need to encourage and support transformation and innovation through better regulation instead of looking for avenues of more regulation. 'It will help define and guide our working relationships in addition to enabling the smooth exchange of supervisory information between us,' he said.