FSCA COMMUNICATION 19 OF 2021 (FAIS)

Submission of representative register

1. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

1.1

In terms of section 13 of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002 (Act 37 of 2007), read with the licensing conditions imposed on authorised financial services providers (“FSPs”), FSPs must, within 15 days of any changes to its representative register, inform the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (“FSCA”) of any changes affected to the details as contained in that register. Currently FSPs can inform the FSCA of such changes by - (a) submission of Form FSP 5 to the Licensing and Business Centre of the FSCA to perform a profile change; (b) logging on to the e-portal using log in credentials provided by the FSCA; or (c) updating the representative register electronically either in text format or in a spreadsheet created in Microsoft Excel, which is validated by the FSCA before importing it into the central register that is maintained by the FSCA.

1.2

The purpose of this Communication is to inform FSPs of the change in the method of submission of the representative register to the FSCA referred to in paragraph 1.1(c) above.

2. CHANGES TO THE ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION OF REPRESENTATIVE REGISTER

2.1

The FSCA will be introducing an electronic channel through which an FSP can upload its representative register using system to system integration and XML (plain text) format. This web service will replace the manner referred to in paragraph 1.1(c) above.

2.2

FSPs will be able to integrate their systems with the FSCA web service by using the SOAP API (simple object access protocol application programming interface) of the FSCA. The SOAP API will therefore be used to submit updates to the representatives register.

2.3

All API communication will be done over a secure protocol (HTTPS) to minimise security risks.

2.4

Data should be encrypted/encoded where specified.

2.5

All FSPs will be assigned a username and password which will need to be submitted with all updates to the representative register.

2.6

If an attempt to access the FSCA API without authorisation is performed, the FSP will receive an error message stating that the credentials are incorrect, not supplied or do not have access to the specified method.

2.7

The FSP’s username and password to access the web services will be supplied to the FSP via the FSCA e-portal and it will be the responsibility of the FSP to keep these credentials safe and secure at all times.

3. TESTING

3.1

The FSCA has created a testing environment to allow development and testing to be completed on the systems of the FSP in order to facilitate system integration and the use of the web service described in paragraph 2 above.

3.2

Accordingly, before an FSP will be able to submit representative updates via the web service, the FSP will be granted access to the testing environment.

3.3

An FSP will have to submit an email to repreqister@fsca.co.za to request a username and password to gain access to the testing environment. The username and password received by the FSP can then be used for testing purposes only.

3.4

After successful integration testing, new login credentials will be supplied to the FSP that will enable the FSP to submit changes to the representative register via the web service.

4. COMMENCEMENT

4.1

The use of the web services will come into effect on 1 November 2021 and FSPs will be able to request credentials for the testing environment from that date.

4.2

The submission of representative registers in Microsoft Excel format will no longer be accepted after 31 March 2022.

4.3

It should be noted that FSPs will still be able add, update details of and remove representatives by using the methods referred to in paragraphs 1.1(a) and (b) above.

5. ENQUIRIES

5.1

The following further information will be made available to FSPs and will also be published on the FSCA’s website:
(a) Upload_Web_File
Used to submit Representative updates to the FSCA’s system; or (b) Get_Process_Response Used to get the response / report of the representatives that were imported.

5.2

Additional technical details for the web service can be found at https://www.fsca.co.za/HTML/FAIS/FSCA_REP_Submission_Web_Services.pdf.

5.3

Any enquiries related to the usage of this web service should be submitted only to repreqister@fsca.co.za.

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FM Mabaso
Divisional Executive: Licensing and Business Centre Financial Sector Conduct Authority

Date of publication: 2 November 2021