Compliance has traditionally been associated with paperwork, manual checks and the challenge of proving that the right processes were followed.
But as regulatory scrutiny increases and accountable institutions face greater expectations around customer due diligence, the industry has been moving towards a more practical question: how can compliance become easier to manage, evidence and maintain?
As VOCA, SW360’s Verification, Onboarding and Compliance Application, marks two years in the market, its significance lies less in the milestone itself and more in what it represents: a shift towards making FICA compliance part of everyday business rather than an administrative exercise that happens around it.
“Compliance should not be something businesses have to reconstruct when an audit or regulatory review happens. The evidence should already exist as part of the process,” says Sameer Kumandan, Managing Director at SW360. “VOCA has helped move that thinking forward by making compliance more practical, traceable and easier to demonstrate.”
A key part of this shift is the electronic audit trail. By automatically recording verification and compliance activity, businesses have a clear record of the checks performed and the decisions made. This creates an evidentiary trail that can be particularly valuable during FIC audits, while reducing reliance on disparate documents, emails and manually maintained records.
The result is a move away from compliance as a collection of individual checks towards a more connected process. Verification reports, risk ratings and supporting information can be accessed through a centralised digital process, while KYC and KYB checks, CIPC checks, ID verification, PEP (politically exposed persons) and sanctions screening, adverse news checks and account verification can be incorporated into the same workflow.
This has implications beyond simply meeting regulatory requirements. Automating traditionally manual processes reduces the administrative burden associated with compliance and allows organisations to spend less time gathering and reconciling information and more time assessing risk and making informed decisions.
“Making compliance easier does not mean making it less rigorous,” says Kumandan. “It means removing unnecessary friction from the process while creating a stronger record of what has been done. That changes compliance from something that can feel retrospective and administrative into something that is built into how the business operates.”
This is particularly relevant as South Africa continues to strengthen its approach to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing following its FATF (Financial Action Task Force) greylisting. While significant progress has been made, accountable institutions remain under pressure to demonstrate that their compliance frameworks are not merely documented, but actively implemented and supported by appropriate evidence.
VOCA also reflects a broader evolution from once-off verification towards ongoing risk awareness. Its monitoring functionality enables businesses to identify changes to client profiles, including changes in PEP and sanctions status, supporting a more continuous approach to due diligence.
For Kumandan, this shift represents the most significant measure of VOCA’s two years in the market. “The real achievement is not that VOCA has reached a two-year milestone,” he says. “It is that we are helping change the way businesses approach compliance. When the process is digital, the audit trail is created as you go and the evidence is readily available, compliance becomes less of a burden and more of an integrated part of doing business.”
