By Adelaide Changole.
South Africa’s financial regulator will await the findings of a study by the world’s top standards-settings body before setting up new rules for on artificial intelligence (AI) the country, it said.
The Basel-based Financial Stability Board is working on principles to help firms responsibly navigate AI adoption in a rapidly evolving landscape and is due to publish its final report, listed as a Group of 20 deliverable under the 2026 US presidency of the forum, next month.
“It’s good for us to be waiting for that because we want to be aligned,” Unathi Kamlana, the commissioner of South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), said in an interview on Friday.
The rules will help guide South African Reserve Bank, the Prudential Authority and the FSCA as they develop joint discussion paper that will include specific considerations on agentic AI and prepare for a future regulatory framework for the industry.
Regulators worldwide are actively developing binding rules and frameworks to address the rapid advancement and potential risks of artificial intelligence.
The FSCA and Prudential Authority have already published a paper on AI, but it was a market scan on AI adoption in the financial sector that examined dominant use cases, Kamlana said.
The regulators plan a subsequent paper on how they intend to incorporate governance principles relating to AI’s use by financial institutions.
“We are going to stay the course on AI and the risk it presents to the financial sector, but we have been clear and consistent on the approach, which is principles rather than rules, because it is a fast evolving area,” he said.