Africa-Press – Eswatini. The country’s non-bank financial institutions (NBFI) assets stood at E94.2 Billion as of the fourth quarter of 2022.
This is according to the fourth quarter of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) Quarterly Statistical Bulletin.
FSRA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ncamiso Ntshalintshali stated that in the year under review, the FSRA noted the increase of the industry’s assets to E94.2 billion from E90.8 billion last quarter.
“However, compared to this time in 2021 the assets showed a decline from E94.4 billion. This trend is consistent with the prevailing economic environment on a yearly basis, the hikes in interest rates and inflationary pressures which affected the performance of financial assets of supervised financial services providers over this period,” he explained.
He stated that as this persisted, they noted a reliance on loans and credit advances by consumers and a decline in member savings amongst the savings and credit co-operatives societies as disposable income continued to be under pressure as consumers adjusted to the changes in the standard of living.
“Financial services consumers are implored to apply sound financial decisions as they transact in the financial services sector. In this period, we have also observed a rise in investment fraud schemes perpetrated through social media platforms,” he said.
Ntshalintshali further announced that following the lapse of their previous strategic plan, the FSRA board had since approved a new organisational strategy.
The CEO said the strategy was now in full effect and would run until March 2025.
“The strategy is based on the following thematic areas, human capital and organisational culture, organisational branding; digitalisation and modernisation of the regulatory and supervisory landscape,” he said.
He stated that the motivation behind these structural changes was to ensure efficiency in discharging the mandate to maintain a safe and sound financial sector while also chartering the authority towards having a fully inclusive, sound and innovative non- bank financial sector with 100 per cent regulatory compliance.
“Several projects have been birthed through this strategy and the FSRA is already on track in their implementation. Thus, the industry will be seeing a suit of new changes in the organisational structure of FSRA among other key projects including the modernisation of the supervisory landscape to be responsive to financial sector developments and changes,” he said.
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