Many accounting practices discover a strange outcome when implementing their Risk Management and Compliance Programme under the FIC Act. After carefully designing a risk scoring model, almost every client ends up classified as high risk. This usually happens because firms assign too much weight to the services they provide, particularly where company secretarial or TCSP activities are involved. The result is a model that does not distinguish between genuinely higher risk clients and ordinary local businesses. A proper risk based approach should assess multiple factors such as the client profile, geographic exposure, services provided, and transaction behaviour to produce a balanced and practical assessment of risk.

When Perfect Advice Gets Ignored

You may have the numbers. The spreadsheets are flawless. Your analysis proves that the company was bleeding money through an overpriced supplier. But the board does not hear you. Six months later, the liquidity crisis arrives exactly as predicted. The lesson? In today’s boardrooms, technical accuracy isn’t enough. Accountants who want influence must translate numbers into decisions, risk, and opportunity.

Accountants are increasingly involved in client transactions that extend beyond traditional accounting work. One area where this is happening more often is property deals. Introducing buyers and sellers, helping negotiate terms, or facilitating the structure of a property sale may seem like normal advisory work. However, under South Africa’s property legislation, these activities can fall within the scope of regulated property practitioner services. Many professionals do not realise that the law focuses on the role performed rather than the professional title used. Understanding where advisory work ends and regulated property facilitation begins is becoming an important compliance issue for accountants in practice.