Regulatory & compliance strategy · 01
Regulatory perimeter memorandum
A written opinion on which statutes and regulators actually apply to this business and its roadmap, feature by feature — with the licensing or registration consequence of each and the point at which…
A written opinion on which statutes and regulators actually apply to this business and its roadmap, feature by feature — with the licensing or registration consequence of each and the point at which it is triggered.
Businesses and platforms that need to know where the regulatory line is before they cross it, and investors who need the answer before they commit.
The perimeter question is usually answered by the product roadmap rather than the current product — a feature six months away can bring an entire licensing regime with it, and the time to know is before it is built.
The law it sits under
The framework this work answers to.
A perimeter memorandum answers one question: which regulators and which statutes actually apply to what this organisation does. The answers that most often surprise a board are whether an activity amounts to rendering financial services requiring a licence under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act 37 of 2002, whether an arrangement is a credit agreement under the National Credit Act 34 of 2005, and whether the organisation is an accountable institution under Schedule 1 to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 — a schedule materially widened by the General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Act 22 of 2022.
How the engagement runs
What you are committing to.
The activities are described as they are actually performed, not as the organisation’s documents describe them, and each is tested against the definitions in the candidate statutes. The memorandum states, for each regime, whether it applies, on what reasoning, and what follows if it does — with the borderline cases identified as borderline rather than resolved by assertion.
Perimeter questions are answered on the substance of the activity, not its label. Calling a facility a "membership fee" does not take it outside the National Credit Act, and calling an introduction a "referral" does not take it outside FAIS.
Related pages, tools and documents
The self-checks and working documents below are free, need no email address, and are the quickest way to judge the work before commissioning any of it.
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