What is FICA?
FICA is the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001, the South African statute that obliges certain businesses — banks, attorneys, estate agents, accountants, casinos and others — to identify their clients, screen them against sanctions and politically-exposed-persons lists, understand the source of their funds, and report suspicious activity to the Financial Intelligence Centre. Conveyancers fall squarely inside the regime. Schedule 1 to the Act lists “a practitioner who practises as defined in the Legal Practice Act” as an accountable institution; that includes every conveyancer admitted to lodge deeds at the Deeds Office.
Since the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Act 1 of 2017, compliance is no longer a tick-box exercise. The Act now requires a risk-based approach: the conveyancer must form a documented view of the money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk presented by each client, and adjust the depth of due diligence accordingly. A salaried Pretoria buyer paying with one disclosed bank account is a low-risk file; a non-resident company funded by a foreign trust is a high-risk one and is examined accordingly.
In practice this means we cannot open a transfer file without your FICA pack. Missing FICA is the single most common reason a matter stalls in its opening fortnight, and it is the easiest delay to avoid — assemble the documents before you instruct, not after. The lists below are the standard requirements; your matter may need more.
Documents for individuals
For every natural person on the deed — buyer, seller, or co-owner — we need a clean identity, a current address, the matrimonial picture, and a credible link to the funds being moved. Couples married in community of property both have to FICA, even where only one spouse is named on the OTP, because under section 15 of the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 the non-signing spouse has equal capacity in the joint estate.
| Document | What it must show |
|---|---|
| Identity | Green bar-coded SA ID, Smart ID card, or — for non-residents — a current passport with the photograph page legible. |
| Proof of residential address | Dated less than three months ago, in your name and at your residential (not postal) address: a municipal utility bill, a bank statement, a lease agreement, or a current municipal account. |
| Marital status | Marriage certificate, antenuptial contract (ANC), or final divorce order — whichever applies. Single buyers can sign an affidavit confirming the position. |
| Tax reference | SARS pin letter or a recent IT34 assessment — needed for the transfer duty declaration. |
| Source of funds | Bank statements covering the inflow, the sale agreement of an existing property, salary slips, or the loan/donation paperwork — see the dedicated section below. |
We accept clear PDF scans or photographs of the originals. We will check the ID number electronically against the Department of Home Affairs and verify the residential address through a credit-bureau check. Where you sign the documents abroad, the residential address proof and marital documents must usually be authenticated either by apostille or by the South African embassy.
Documents for companies
Where a private company (Pty) Ltd is the buyer or seller, we treat the company as the client and FICA both the entity and every natural person who controls it. The company itself is obviously not a person who can hand us an ID, so its “identity documents” are its statutory founding records, and its “proof of address” is its registered address recorded at CIPC.
- CoR 14.3 — registration certificate issued by CIPC on incorporation, or the older CoR 9.1 for pre-2011 companies. We also confirm current status with a fresh CIPC enterprise search.
- Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI), including any subsequent amendments — this defines the company’s capacity and any restrictions on dealing in immovable property.
- Register of directors and share certificates, identifying every director and every shareholder of the company.
- Public officer details: name, ID number and contact, used for the SARS interface on the transfer duty declaration.
- Beneficial ownership declaration — the natural persons who ultimately own or control the company, recorded against CIPC since the 2023 amendments. We pull the latest CIPC beneficial ownership filing and you confirm or update it.
- Personal FICA on every director, on the public officer, and on every shareholder holding 5% or more (or any beneficial owner of any percentage). The depth of the personal pack is the same as for an individual transaction in their own name.
- Resolution of the directors authorising the transaction and nominating the signatory. The resolution is part of the Power of Attorney pack we lodge at the Deeds Office.
Documents for close corporations (CCs)
New close corporations have not been registrable since 1 May 2011 (when the Companies Act 71 of 2008 took effect), but a great many existing CCs continue to own property in Pretoria. The FICA pack mirrors the company pack, but the CC’s founding statement is a different document.
- CK1 (founding statement) or, more commonly today, the CoR 1A with all amendments — both reflect the registered name, members and member’s interest split.
- Members’ details — full names, ID numbers, and residential addresses of every member.
- Member’s interest split as currently registered. Any pending change of membership must be filed at CIPC and reflected before transfer.
- Personal FICA on every member, regardless of percentage held. CCs are limited to ten members so the pack is rarely large.
- Members’ resolution authorising the purchase or sale and nominating the signatory.
- Beneficial ownership declaration — a CC’s members are typically also its beneficial owners, but we confirm in writing.
Documents for trusts
Trusts are the deepest FICA dive. A trust is not a juristic person in South African law — it acts only through its trustees, and only those trustees who are recorded on the most recent Letters of Authority issued by the Master of the High Court have legal capacity to bind it. We pull and verify the Letters of Authority directly from the Master’s office; an outdated set is one of the most common reasons a trust’s transfer is “noted” for correction at the Deeds Office.
- Letters of Authority from the Master — current, naming every serving trustee. If a trustee has resigned or died, the new Letters reflecting the change must be in hand before the trust can transact.
- Trust deed as registered, plus every amendment that has been accepted by the Master. We check the trust deed for any clause restricting the trustees’ capacity to buy, sell or mortgage immovable property.
- Personal FICA on every trustee, including any independent trustee — full pack as for an individual transaction.
- FICA on the founder of the trust (the donor of the original assets), which the bank-grade compliance tools usually require even where the founder is deceased.
- Beneficial ownership declaration for the trust — under the 2023 amendments, both the Master’s office and the conveyancer must record the natural persons who are the ultimate beneficiaries (or class of beneficiaries) and any natural person controlling the trust, regardless of whether they are themselves trustees.
- Trustees’ resolution, signed by every trustee, authorising the transaction and nominating the signatory. South African case law is strict: an act by some-but-not-all trustees binds nothing.
Source-of-funds requirements
FICA does not stop at “who are you?” — it asks “where did the money come from?”. Source-of-funds verification is the part of the file every conveyancer used to skim and now has to take seriously. The depth of the inquiry scales with the risk profile of the matter and with the size of the transaction. A R3 million salaried buyer producing six months of payslips and a bank statement is closed in a morning; a R30 million cash buyer with funds wired in from offshore is a different file altogether.
| Funding type | What we ask for |
|---|---|
| Salary and savings | Three to six months of bank statements showing salary inflows, plus the latest IRP5 or payslip if the deposit comes from accumulated savings. |
| Sale of an existing property | The signed sale agreement of the source property and proof of registration in the buyer’s name when those funds become available. |
| Loan or donation | Signed loan agreement or donation declaration, plus FICA on the lender or donor and proof of their source of funds where the amount is material. |
| Inheritance | Master’s reference and a copy of the executor’s distribution account showing the bequest. |
| Foreign funds (non-residents) | SARB’s exchange-control approval or non-resident Rand account documentation, plus the bank’s Balance of Payments (BoP) inward-payment confirmation showing the funds entered South Africa. |
Cash purchases attract closer scrutiny than bonded ones for the simple reason that a bank’s own FICA on the bond grant has done part of the work for us. On a cash transfer the conveyancer carries the source-of-funds analysis alone — and on a high-value cash purchase that analysis can be the longest single workstream in the file. Plan for it.
PEPs and Enhanced Due Diligence
A Politically Exposed Person (PEP) is a person who holds, or has held within the past 12 months, a prominent public function — domestically or in a foreign state. The Act splits the category into domestic prominent influential persons (DPIPs), foreign prominent public officials (FPPOs) and the family members and known close associates of either. Cabinet ministers, premiers, mayors of metros, judges of the superior courts, the heads of major state-owned enterprises, ambassadors and the directors of the SARB are all caught — and so are their spouses, children, parents and business partners.
Where a client falls into the PEP category, the conveyancer must apply Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD): senior-level approval before opening the file, a deeper source-of-funds and source-of-wealth analysis, and ongoing monitoring of the relationship. The screening is not optional. Every FICA pack we open is checked against an electronic PEP and sanctions list (which also covers the United Nations consolidated list and the local SARS enforcement publications) and any positive hit triggers EDD whether or not the client volunteered the information.
A PEP is not a money launderer; the rules exist because the position carries a heightened risk of bribery proceeds finding their way into property. None of the EDD steps prevents a legitimate transfer from going through — they slow it down by anything from a few days to a few weeks, and they require complete cooperation from the client.
Beneficial ownership reporting
The 2023 amendments to the Companies Act, the Trust Property Control Act and to FICA itself completed a long-running shift towards transparent beneficial ownership in South Africa. Every legal arrangement that holds property — every company, close corporation and trust — must now identify the natural persons who ultimately own or control it, and that identification must be filed at the appropriate registry as well as recorded by the conveyancer.
- Companies and CCs file a beneficial ownership return at CIPC. The return identifies any natural person who, alone or jointly, holds 5% or more of the equity or who exercises effective control. We pull the latest filing as part of our intake and ask you to confirm or update it.
- Trusts file a beneficial ownership register with the Master of the High Court. The register identifies the founder, every trustee, every named beneficiary, and any natural person who controls the trust through any other means. The register must be updated each time the position changes.
- The conveyancer’s record mirrors and supplements those filings on the FICA file. We are required to be satisfied with the beneficial ownership picture; an outdated CIPC filing is not, on its own, an answer.
Why FICA matters and what happens if you can’t comply
Without FICA the conveyancer cannot open the matter. We physically cannot lodge a deed at the Deeds Office on behalf of a client we have not identified — the Deeds Office itself does not police FICA, but our practice rules and the Financial Intelligence Centre do, and our trust account audit will catch a non-FICA matter long before the deal closes. The transfer simply does not happen.
Non-compliance is not a paperwork issue, either. The Centre and the Legal Practice Council can each impose administrative sanctions on the conveyancer personally, ranging from a written reprimand and a remediation plan to substantial monetary penalties. A pattern of non-compliance can found a referral to the disciplinary tribunal of the Legal Practice Council. Conveyancers who treat FICA as friction rather than a compliance discipline do not stay in practice for long.
That is why we build the FICA pack into the first letter we send you and why we politely chase missing items every working day until the file is closed for compliance. It is not bureaucracy — it is the condition on which we are allowed to act for you. For a wider explanation of how FICA fits into the eight-step conveyancing workflow, see the property transfer process; for cash buyers in particular, the source-of-funds depth is covered in our spoke on cash purchases.
Frequently asked questions
It must be dated within the last three months, addressed to you (or jointly to you and a spouse) at your residential address. Acceptable documents include a municipal utility bill, a bank or credit-card statement, a current lease, a paid-up account from a recognised retailer, or a recent municipal rates account. A postal-only document — a PO Box statement, for example — does not work; FICA requires a residential address, not a postal one.
A current passport replaces the SA ID for non-residents and for South Africans living abroad. The photograph page must be legible, the passport must be in date for the duration of the transfer, and we will normally also ask for evidence of your country of tax residence. Where you sign the deeds outside South Africa, the passport copy and the rest of the FICA pack will need to be authenticated either by apostille (if your country is a signatory to the 1961 Hague Convention) or by the South African embassy in your jurisdiction.
Distance does not stop a transfer — but it does add steps. We will courier the Power of Attorney and the transfer duty declaration to you for signature, ask you to sign before a Notary Public in your country, and then have the documents returned with either an apostille certificate or South African embassy authentication. Most foreign jurisdictions issue an apostille within a week.
Plan for an extra two to four weeks for the round trip and the authentication. Email scans during the drafting phase keep the timeline tight; the only step that genuinely needs the originals is signature.
Each co-buyer signs separately, in their own jurisdiction, before a Notary Public, and each set of signed documents is authenticated and couriered back to us. We then collate them at the Deeds Office. The co-buyer’s FICA pack — ID, address proof, marital status and source of funds — is gathered identically to a resident buyer’s and is verified electronically. We have completed many transfers where the buyers were never in the same room, let alone the same country, during the transaction.