The FSCA and AI in financial services: a clear, fact-based explanation for South African organisations — with osFoundry as an example and dgm as an independent partner.

dgm is an independent integration partner for osFoundry — it is not affiliated with osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC) and has not yet completed an integration project for any client.

The FSCA conducts market regulation for South African financial services. Here is the honest position on AI.

What exists and what does not

South Africa has no AI-specific statute, but financial services are tightly regulated. Banks, insurers and financial institutions answer to the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), its Prudential Authority and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA); the FSCA/PA Joint Standard 1 of 2023 on IT governance and risk management commenced on 15 November 2024 and the Joint Standard 2 of 2024 on cybersecurity and cyber resilience took effect on 1 June 2025. Both are IT and cyber requirements rather than AI rules, but they shape any AI deployment. Expect documented governance, explainability, human oversight and careful treatment of customer data under POPIA.

What it means for your business

If you are a regulated institution, follow the FSCA’s current communications and keep accountability, human oversight and customer transparency. osFoundry is a model-agnostic AI orchestration platform built on a bring-your-own-key (BYOK) principle: usage-based pricing with no per-user fee, local-first and self-hostable operation, the option to pin your data region (US, EU or Japan) or to deploy it inside your own private cloud.

This article is general information and is not legal, financial or tax advice. Incentives, tax rates and regulations change; always confirm the current position with an official source (SARS, the Department of Science and Innovation, the dtic, the Information Regulator, the FSCA or the relevant authority) or a qualified adviser before you act.

You can explore the osFoundry platform to learn more.

Where dgm comes in

dgm is an independent integration partner that helps organisations in South Africa adopt the osFoundry platform — from identifying the first practical use case, to setting it up, to connecting AI to the systems you already run. dgm operates separately from osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC) and has not yet completed an integration project for any client, so everything above is a proposed service rather than a delivered outcome. If you would like to weigh up a practical first step, dgm would be glad to think it through with you. Arrange an introductory call with dgm.