A report on the 2024 accounts by the National Bank of Angola (BNA) highlights the effective supervisory model recognized by the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) as part of a regional process promoted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The BNA also announced an upcoming evaluation of the national financial system, the Financial System Assessment Program (FSAP), in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
The purpose of this assessment is to “identify system vulnerabilities and propose an action plan for its strengthening and ongoing development.”
Within its supervisory plan for 2024, the BNA conducted 15 inspections of banking financial institutions, including six scheduled and nine unscheduled inspections, along with four inspections of non-banking institutions.
The inspections targeted internal controls related to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, revealing issues such as inadequacies in client identification procedures, manual risk classification, deficiencies in transaction monitoring, and unresolved alerts in control systems.
As a result, recommendation letters and sanction proposals were issued to non-compliant entities.
As of the report’s completion, five institutions—one commercial bank and four non-banking entities—had implemented their plans, while 23 others were still in development with a deadline set for March 2025.
During the FATF post-observation period, several actions were completed, including sectoral risk assessments for money laundering and terrorism financing, risk disclosures to the supervised sector, the establishment of a supervisory strategy, the application of a risk matrix to non-banking institutions, human capital enhancement, a review of the regulatory framework, and the publication of technical guidance for financial institutions.
In October, Angola was added to the FATF “grey list” of countries with strategic deficiencies in money laundering and terrorism financing prevention. This designation subjects the country to closer scrutiny and could have negative economic repercussions, such as difficulties in securing international financing, reduced foreign investment, and increased transaction costs.
