WHO IS NAMFISA?
NAMFISA was established by an Act of Parlia-ment: The NAMFISA Act, (Act No. 3 of 2001). NAMFISA is the regulator and supervisor of non-banking financial services, established to oversee the non-banking financial services industry in Na-mibia, and is responsible for licensing, compliance and enforcement. In terms of its legislative mandate,
NAMFISA also advises the Minister of Finance on matters related to our sector. Regulation and super-vision is necessary to foster financial soundness of financial institutions, ensure market integrity, main-tain financial stability and protect consumers as well as maintain confidence in the financial system.
WHAT’S NAMFISA’S MANDATE?
NAMFISA is responsible for the regulation and su-
pervision of non-banking financial institutions in the country. The authority is in charge of regulating in-stitutions and activities such as pension funds, medi-cal aid funds, friendly societies, long and short term insurance, investment managers, unit trusts, stock brokers and sponsors, the Stock Exchange and mi-cro-lenders. This was initially done by the Ministry of Finance prior to the establishment of NAMFISA. The Government established NAMFISA in order to improve the focus of regulation and supervision of the Namibian non-banking financial services in-dustry and to secure protection for all stakeholders in the industry, including consumers. The financial industry is by any standard sizeable in terms of both the value of assets and number of institutions. Bear-ing that in mind the regulatory and supervisory role played by NAMFISA is of utmost importance to ensure a level playing field, build confidence in our financial system and protect consumers from undue
practices in the industry.
Together with the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Namibia, NAMFISA is also a lead agency in the implementation of the Namibia Financial Sec-tor Strategy (NFSS) which was launched in August 2012.
The NFSS is the long-term development strategy for the Namibian financial sector and the expected outcomes of that Strategy include appropriate safety nets to protect depositors, to ensure and maintain financial stability, implementation of a consumer protection framework to ensure transparency and disclosure as well as consumer complaints and re-dress mechanisms, increase national financial lit-eracy rate, improved access to financial services and products by Namibians by reducing lack of access from the current baseline of 51.7% to 26%.