Week 46 to 16 November
Ben Pieters - the Business Support Specialist
Constantly challenging ourselves to deliver more to our clients.
Welcome to 'Navigating GRC' your guide through the intricate landscape of Governance, Risk, and Compliance.
Corporates and homeowners, stay ahead of the curve with expert insights, practical strategies, and industry best practices.
Lifelong learning is not just a professional requirement but a strategic advantage in the dynamic world of GRC. Unlock the power of effective GRC to drive business success and mitigate risks.
Please note that we identify the author and the name of the publication the article appeared in, and directly extract aspects we believe would reflect the idea or thought expressed therein.
Employee Engagement - The Last Mile of Compliance & Ethics
A thought-provoking article in GRC2020 caught my eye.
Compliance and ethics are at the core of building a resilient, trustworthy organization that is focused on integrity. These functions are the bastion of corporate integrity.
Unfortunately, too often, compliance and ethics gravitate to the back-office. Teams work tirelessly to monitor regulatory change, update policies, and ensure controls are defined.
These efforts are essential, but they aren’t the end of the story. Compliance success ultimately hinges on employee engagement — that “last mile” of compliance and ethics that transforms policy into action.
Organisations need to prioritise employee engagement as the backbone of compliance, ethics, and governance.
An organization can be aware of every relevant law and regulation, have policies written in impeccable prose, and maintain perfect documentation, but if employees don’t know, understand, or remember these policies, compliance is compromised.
The human firewall is built on employees who are informed, empowered, and engaged in the organization’s ethical standards and compliance requirements.
The challenge is making compliance and ethics engagement readily available, easy to access, and most importantly, tailored to each role.
Surviving the Fire
Compliance and practise, practise, practise until you can do it with your eyes closed. No different from engaging your employees....
At this year’s Bombardier Safety Standdown, contract pilot Kevin Van Splunder took the stage to share his experience during an extremely hard landing and subsequent fire in a Cessna Citation X+ on August 5 in Jamestown, New York.
Van Splunder shared an image of the flight track of the aeroplane during its short seven-minute flight. “I've learned, I've applied—and you'll understand why—and now I'm here to share it.”
“All of a sudden, we saw ourselves in a descent at 494 knots and 6,700 feet per minute. It's about 73 seconds to impact.”
As a young pilot, he recalled the training he received from “old codgers” who taught him to close his eyes and learn how to touch every switch in the cockpit. “Know what the different switches feel like,” he said. “We don't get that information from CAE and FlightSafety, as much as I think we need it. You need to do that in the aircraft.”
“Now with all the other CAS [crew alerting system] messages that were on the CAS list, we didn't have any time to pull out checklists and start reading and seeing what the systems were [doing]. It's the knowledge that you learn that you have to apply."
One of the first captains that Van Splunder flew with “was adamant to always have 121.5 [the emergency frequency] on your second comm [radio],” he said. "ATC told us where the airport was because we had smoke in the cockpit. And even though oxygen masks can be worn, you’re not going to see much past that.”
The Citation impacted the ground 200 feet before the runway threshold and bounced into the air, then onto the runway before sliding onto the grass, bouncing back into the air and spinning around, and finally coming to a stop in a total of just 2,020 feet.
"I at no point thought that I wasn't going to make it. I knew I was going to walk away. And that's because we kept our heads calm and cool. We had good communication coming down and we did what needed to be done."
South Africa Declares National Disaster
Bloomberg reported via BusinessTech that South Africa has declared a national disaster following severe floods and storms that caused extensive damage across several provinces.
According to Elias Sithole, head of the National Disaster Management Centre, the disruptive weather between October 22 and 29 affected the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Limpopo, North West, Gauteng, and Mpumalanga provinces.
The declaration assigns the national government primary responsibility for coordinating disaster management efforts, including cleanup and rebuilding.
These weather-related anomalies, combined with last month’s intense storms, underscore the growing unpredictability of South Africa’s climate.
The declaration of a national disaster reflects the seriousness of these impacts and the need for a coordinated, large-scale response to address the challenges posed by these extreme weather events.
A yellow level 4 warning by the SA Weather Service signifies a high likelihood of significant disruptions, including closed roads, damaged infrastructure, and delays in service delivery due to hazardous weather.
Motorists were advised to exercise caution, maintain safe following distances, and use headlights during adverse conditions to minimise risks.
FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Absa shrinking branches
Shaun Jacobs reports in Daily Investor that South Africa’s ‘Big Four’ banks – FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank, and Absa – are shrinking their branch footprint in their country despite opening new points of presence in the past year.
The shift has also been driven by increased competition from local digital-only banks such as Discovery Bank, TymeBank, and Bank Zero, which do not have any branches or ATMs.
This has largely reduced the need for full-service branches, with banks instead looking to minimise their footprint and focus on offering services that cannot be conducted digitally.
Apart from meeting increased usage of digital channels to conduct transactions, these banks have also looked to reduce their operating costs and increase their capital efficiency.
The risk to homeowners lies in the increased difficulty meeting with a bank official when a matter cannot be resolved via a Help Desk enquiry.
Future of Aviation’s Mx Workforce
This article by Sheryl Barden of AIN is most thought-provoking - and applies to most sectors of our economy, i.e. our ability to recruit and retain expertise.
Boeing projects that aviation will need 716,000 new maintenance technicians worldwide over the next 15 years. At the same time, 36% of today’s workforce is nearing or beyond a typical retirement age.
So the challenge isn’t just about recruiting new talent; it’s about keeping experienced technicians engaged before they walk out the door.
We need to explore challenges and solutions around mentorship, compensation, technology and work-life balance.
In smaller operations, every technician wears multiple hats. Losing even one person can leave the whole team struggling to make par.
A central theme of the panel was that money alone won’t keep technicians on board. “A raise makes people happy for a day, but if they don’t feel valued, they’ll leave.”
Mentorship isn’t only about career advancement—it fosters loyalty and creates a sense of belonging. With aircraft becoming more automated, technicians need to be proficient in network connectivity, avionics, and software troubleshooting.
“When you give people a better schedule and a sense of purpose, they’ll choose you over more money somewhere else.”
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Good news for South African taxpayers
Shaun Jacobs reports in Daily Investor that SARS has traditionally taken a strict view of what constitutes a “bona fide inadvertent error” that allows taxpayers to avoid understatement penalties ranging from 10% to 200% of the tax shortfall.
However, the revenue service must update this view as the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and the Constitutional Court have clarified what constitutes such an error. The clarification from the courts also showed how important it is for taxpayers to receive professional tax advice.
BDO South Africa Associate Director Esther van Schalkwyk explained that the court's view on this matter is largely favourable to taxpayers.
For years, SARS has taken a strict view of what constitutes a “bona fide inadvertent error” – a golden ticket that allows taxpayers to avoid understatement penalties ranging from 10% to 200% of the tax shortfall.
For SARS to successfully impose penalties, it must demonstrate that the taxpayer’s actions fall within one of the behaviour categories outlined in section 223 of the Tax Administration Act.
These range from “substantial understatement” to “intentional tax evasion.” If a taxpayer fully discloses an arrangement to SARS and relies on a professional opinion that meets specific requirements, SARS is unlikely to prove the presence of any of the behaviour categories.
SARS’ previous narrow interpretation requires an update, especially when taxpayers act on professional advice. This emphasises the importance of obtaining tax opinions that meet the requirements of section 223 – a safeguard that taxpayers should not overlook, warned Van Schalkwyk.
Meet 'No Meet Week'
An article caught my eye from Business Insider. Not GRC related, but touches on meetings bloody meetings.....
Last year, I told my reports that I was taking every non-essential meeting off my calendar for a week. I’d call it No Meet Week and use that time to catch up on my ever-growing to-do list, ideate, and edit.
I hate meetings — and I say this as an extroverted people person.
I’m not alone. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t have one-on-ones with his direct reports. Also, a 2023 Microsoft survey that analyzed data from 31,000 workers from 31 countries found that inefficient meetings were the No. 1 hindrance to their productivity, pointing to 68% of respondents who said they don’t have enough time to focus during their workdays.
I get it: On average, I spend about 18.3 hours a week in meetings, or nearly half my workday.
After I introduced No Meet Week to my team, one manager said she’d like to participate too, and soon, I extended it to my entire team.
What resulted was a boon to morale and overall productivity — not just for that week but throughout the rest of the year.
Managers started to question if meetings were still a good use of time and came up with other more efficient ways to communicate in our hybrid newsroom.
Trading crypto in South Africa
As reported in BusinessTech, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) has gazetted a new directive related to crypto trades in South Africa, which aims to hold crypto asset service providers (CASPs) accountable for tracking the origin and destination of transfers.
The directive relates to the so-called “Travel Rule” of trades and is directly tied to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) recommendations to clamp down on crypto as a means of money laundering and terrorist financing.
The directive will come into operation on 30 April 2025.
Before the South African authorities switched positions on crypto assets in 2021, crypto trades were unregulated and outside the various laws put in place to track illicit activities. However, in 2024, crypto assets are taxable, and trades are becoming increasingly regulated.
The directive puts the onus squarely on CASPS to do the due diligence on trades and to ensure that they do not involve bad actors—if they cannot verify information, the trade should not be allowed.
The FIC said that all ordering and recipient CASPs must comply with the directive – and as such must develop risk-based policies and procedures for the treatment of crypto asset transfers that involve “unhosted wallets”.
The FIC will consider any CASP that does not comply with the directive by the date of implementation non-compliant and subject to administrative sanctions.
The truth about uncapped mobile data
Hanno Labuschagne reports in MyBroadBand that South African mobile operators cannot offer truly uncapped mobile data plans because such packages would significantly strain the country’s limited radio frequency spectrum.
Mobile networks in South Africa don’t typically throttle speeds on their regular data bundles, which means consumers can access the fastest possible speeds regardless of whether they buy small or large bundles.
South African mobile networks have far less room to accommodate uncapped usage because most people in the country rely on mobile connectivity as their primary way of accessing the Internet.
Radiofrequency spectrum — the lifeblood of a mobile network — is also in short supply because South Africa’s digital migration has been delayed by more than a decade.
Although Rain, Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom all offer uncapped data services that run on their mobile networks — these are limited in terms of mobility and speed. The packages may only be used in one location, and after consuming a certain amount of data, speeds are reduced — often to a single-digit Mbps figure.
These limits help operators ensure that their networks are not overloaded with too much demand, degrading the experience for other users.
Network speeds have significantly improved as mobile networks invested tens of billions of rand into upgrading their networks to tap the maximum potential of their spectrum.
Cohabitation & Life Partnership Agreements
Peter van Niekerk of Eversheds Sutherland writes in goLegal that historically, there were no financial consequences for parties who lived together but were not married.
Recently, the High Court confirmed in the matter of E.W v V.H that parties in a permanent life partnership have common law protection if a duty of support is established factually within the relationship.
The significance of the judgment is that if you are in a relationship that is similar to that of a marriage, i.e. you cohabit and have assumed permanent responsibilities for supporting each other, then a legally enforceable duty towards your life partner arises under common law.
For those of you who cohabit and want certainty, it is advisable to enter into a Life Partnership Agreement to protect your rights and interests according to your wishes and needs.
If your partner does not want to sign it, you should reconsider your relationship with him/her.
A cohabiting partner may receive pension fund benefits as a dependant and even claim compensation if their partner dies as a result of injuries sustained during employment. You will be treated as a spouse for income tax purposes, as well as being recognised as a dependant under the Medical Schemes Act.
It is advisable to avoid any risks by consulting with your attorney to conclude a Life Partnership Agreement to avoid unforeseen consequences resulting from a permanent relationship.
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