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Governance and compliance that holds up when someone checks.

We work with South African organisations that have grown past their arrangements, and with accountable institutions under the FIC Act.

Book a callSee where to start
Where to start

Each kind of organisation has its own first step

For growing organisations

Your controls have not kept up with your growth.

Governance, risk frameworks, board reporting and the arrangements that should have been put in place two years ago. Built for businesses of roughly thirty to five hundred people, where a finance or operations leader has picked up risk alongside a full-time job.

First step

Start with a Risk Priority Session: two hours with you and your leadership team, followed by a short written note of the priorities and the order to take them in.

If more is needed after that: a governance and risk framework built with your team, or a part-time chief risk officer.

What a Risk Priority Session covers
For accountable institutions

You are an accountable institution under the FIC Act.

Risk management and compliance programmes, business risk assessments, customer due diligence, and the evidence an inspector will ask for: the training register, the screening hit log, the cash threshold report register reconciled to your sales ledger.

First step

Start with an FIC Readiness Review: whether your programme, your risk assessment and your records would support you at an inspection, and what to fix first.

If more is needed after that: a programme built or rebuilt around your business. If your business is small and straightforward, a good template and half a day of training may be the proportionate answer, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a programme.

Estate agents and item 20 dealers in high-value goods must file their RMCP with the FIC by 31 October. If yours has not been checked against Guidance Note 7B, say so when you book.

What an FIC Readiness Review covers
Leadership

Our founder and principal

Claire Coustas, founder and principal of Widbrook Consulting

Claire Coustas

Founder and principal, Widbrook Consulting

Claire spent twenty years in senior risk and compliance roles inside banks, specialist lenders and insurers, in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Colleagues came to her for the difficult situation: the one that was politically awkward, or where the commercial answer and the regulatory answer seemed to point in opposite directions. Her background is financial crime and enterprise risk inside banks, under supervisors in two countries.

More about our founder

Enterprise risk frameworks built and rebuilt at four financial institutions, at different stages of maturity.

A twenty-person enhanced due diligence team led.

Postgraduate Diploma in Governance, Risk and Compliance, International Compliance Association.

From Insights

Notes on risk, governance and the FIC Act

Regulatory change

Off the grey list, still under the microscope

Delisting was read across the market as the end of the pressure. The paper trail since says the pressure moved.

FIC Act

Your RMCP is now a submission, not a shelf document

Two things changed this year. Accountable institutions have to file their programme annually, and the standard it will be judged against moved in August.

FIC Act

What a template RMCP cannot do for you

The Act asks you to develop, document, maintain and implement. A bought document does one of the four, and from this year you file it annually.

All insights
Next step

Start a conversation

01

The first call

About thirty minutes, at no cost, with our founder and principal, to work out whether we can help and what the first step would be. It is not free advice.

02

Scope, timetable and fee

If we can help, you get a written scope, a timetable and a fee before anything starts. If we cannot, we will say so and suggest who might.

03

Work begins

Nothing starts until you have agreed the scope in writing, and nobody will chase you if you decide not to go ahead.

Book a callRead before you call

Or call [phone number] or email hello@widbrookconsulting.co.za. We reply personally, within one business day.

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Occasional notes on risk and compliance

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