Trust under pressure. Why compliance needs a reset in South Africa

South Africa’s regulatory environment is widely regarded as mature and globally credible. Yet in many organisations, compliance is still experienced as a cost centre: something to “get done” rather than an important construct that strengthens the business. 

This traditional framing is increasingly outdated and risky.

A better way to understand compliance is as a stabiliser. Businesses don’t operate in isolation; they operate within wider social and economic systems. As organisations scale, they accumulate influence and in the absence of counterbalancing forces can create the conditions for wider systems instability, harm and loss of confidence. Regulation exists to keep systems predictable, manageable and fair. The real challenge is calibration: too little governance can lead to failure; too much friction can throttle competitiveness and innovation.

The systems logic is sound, but recent developments have shifted the conversation. Compliance is no longer separable from reputation management.

In a world of eroding institutional trust, stakeholders are increasingly judging organisations by observable conduct: what customers experience, what employees report, and what patterns the media amplifies, rather than what is stated in policy documents or annual reports. The implication is uncomfortable but useful: you can be “compliant on paper” and still lose trust in practice.

This is why King V matters. 

Across sectors and enterprise sizes, governance can no longer be treated as procedural formality. King V represents a reset, with simplified language and a unified Disclosure Framework designed to make governance easier to understand, apply and communicate. 

In other words: the baseline is rising, and clarity becomes a strategic capability, not an admin exercise. 

One of the most practical ways to “read” compliance maturity is through the emergent patterns. 

In financial services, the FAIS Ombud recorded 3,382 complaints in 2024/2025 (down from 4,501 the previous year), with signs of improved resolution before escalation, an indicator of an industry shaped by mature regulator relationships and established market-conduct discipline. A key enabler of this success is the Treating Customers Fairly framework (TCF), which translates customer fairness into operational expectations across the product lifecycle.

By contrast, the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud recorded 12,207 complaints in 2024/2025 (8% higher than the previous period), with online transactions responsible for a significant share. One interpretation is that fast-growing channels can outpace governance maturity and customer-fairness playbooks, especially where third-party ecosystems and internal controls are still developing.

So what should leaders do?

The next evolution in reputation management is an integration with compliance: weakening compliance silos and treating governance, risk, customer fairness and culture as interconnected. And because third-party networks often carry hidden risk, supplier due diligence needs to be embedded into everyday procurement, not bolted on after issues surface.