South Africa's financial regulator will wait for the Financial Stability Board to publish its AI findings before setting local rules. FSCA commissioner Unathi Kamlana told Bloomberg it is good for the authority to wait because it wants to be aligned.

The Basel-based FSB is finalising principles for responsible AI adoption by financial firms, listed as a G20 deliverable under the 2026 US presidency, and will publish next month.

Kamlana was explicit about the approach: "We are going to stay the course on AI and the risk it presents to the sector, but we have been clear and consistent on the approach, which is principles rather than rules, as it is a fast-evolving area," he said.

The FSB's findings will feed into a joint discussion paper from the Reserve Bank, the Prudential Authority and the FSCA, which will include specific considerations on agentic AI. The FSCA and Prudential Authority have already published one paper, but it was a market scan of AI adoption across the sector, focusing on dominant use cases rather than anything binding.

A further paper is planned on how governance principles will apply to AI use by financial institutions. So there is no timeline, no draft rules and no compliance obligation attached to any of this yet.

MyBroadband, carrying Bloomberg's interview, reported Kamlana's comments and noted regulators worldwide are actively developing binding rules for AI. The Financial Stability Board consulted on sound practices for responsible AI adoption in June, and the FSCA is waiting on that work.

DLA Piper documents how differently the same regulator handled crypto, declaring crypto assets financial products under FAIS through General Notice 1350 in October 2022 and forcing every provider to apply for a licence in a six-month window or face criminal conviction and a R10-million fine.

Set the two approaches side by side. On crypto, the FSCA moved first and moved hard, declaring crypto assets financial products, imposing a licensing deadline and attaching criminal liability, all ahead of any global consensus and while Treasury separately worked on cross-border restrictions.

On AI, it is waiting for Basel and choosing principles over rules. The difference is not really about risk appetite. Crypto arrived as a discrete product the regulator could define and put a perimeter around. AI is a capability spreading through every function of every regulated firm at once, which makes a rulebook obsolete before it is published.

The same logic sits behind the National Payment System Bill's move from regulating entities to regulating activities. For any financial services business, the practical position is that nothing is required of you yet, but the joint discussion paper is where the argument gets settled, and firms already deploying agentic AI will be the ones the regulators use as examples.

You might also like our piece on the shake-up of SA's payment system governance, the FSCA debarments at Africa Bitcoin Corporation, and why AI financial crime in SA keeps outrunning compliance.

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