South Africa follows Australia’s lead

Australia’s financial services framework has proven itself to be world lead_ing, with the South African financial services industry set to implement an Australian-type model after benchmarking other existing regimes in developed economies.

According to the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) chief executive officer Richard Gilbert, the South African industry plans to merge its associations and implement a new industry model, which has been confirmed as based on the Australian model.

“They have about four associations working in the IFSA space over there and they’re looking at a merger between as many as they possibly can,” Gilbert said.

“[They’ve] travelled across the world looking at options. It’s fair to say they have settled on an Australian-type model.”

In late January, Gilbert travelled to South Africa at the invitation of the country’s financial industry to address representatives on the details of Australia’s industry workings.

“Ordinarily, we don’t have requests like this. It’s the first request in nine years. The board was very pleased. We had about 35 people in the room, from three associations,” he said.

Gilbert said the next step in the process is for South Africa’s associations to make a formal decision. He said they still needed to look at the structure, including “the board community and a multiplicity of working groups”.

“My impressions were that the country has a great future in both the community and economic sense. Though the challenge they have is making a mark on a very fast growing economy.”

Gilbert said he expected the South African associations would contact him in the short-term to further the talks and process.

IFSA has over 140 members responsible for investing over $950 billion on behalf of more than nine million Australians.