Ombud Council AR 2026

PART B: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

entail regular reporting of ombud scheme complaints data and identified conduct risks to the Minister of Finance, the National Treasury, the FSCA, and the National Credit Regulator; and ongoing recorded engagements with the National Treasury and regulators in relation to conduct risk mitigation efforts. Supporting implementation of the reform proposals in the National Treasury’s policy statement “A Simpler, Stronger Financial Sector Ombud System” (February 2024) . Implementing the reforms outlined by the National Treasury in its policy statement will require new primary legislation and subordinate legislation and related technical inputs and engagements with the National Treasury and other key stakeholders. Delivery of this outcome therefore requires providing technical inputs into the legislative proposals to create the statutory underpinning for the new, consolidated ombud system, through the Ombud Council’s ongoing participation in a National Treasury, World Bank, FSCA and Council legislative working group that is drafting these proposals. In anticipation of the proposed new legislative frameworks for the ombud system, and in line with our current responsibility to promote co-operation and coordination between ombud schemes (paragraph 177(1)(b) of the FSR Act), the Council uses our current legislative toolkit to streamline alignment and coordination across the complaint handling processes of the existing ombud schemes. The associated APP output is the development and implementation of a coordination plan agreed between the Council and the existing ombud schemes, setting out planned scheme process changes aimed at alignment and coordination between schemes, with progress against the plan to be tracked. A further targeted output is finalising Council Rules for complaint handling processes for the Pension Funds Adjudicator, aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of scheme processes while also supporting process consistency across ombud schemes. 4.2. Outcomes, Outputs, Output Indicators, Targets and Actual Achievements 4.2.1. Progress on achievement of outcomes The targeted APP output entails the recordal of the Council’s ongoing technical and regulatory inputs into this work. Improving alignment and coordination of Ombud Scheme complaint handling processes.

paragraph 5 of Part C of this Report). The Council received the external audit report for the 2024/25 financial year in the second quarter as targeted. The report confirmed a clean (unqualified) external audit opinion, demonstrating the effectiveness of the Council’s financial controls, performance reporting, and compliance systems. The internal audit programme commenced in the second quarter and the target of no material findings was achieved during the financial year. The Council submitted the compliance framework to be noted by the Audit & Risk Committee in the second quarter, rather than in the first quarter as targeted, due to procurement process delays in securing the services of a compliance consultant to assist with the framework development. The compliance framework was finalised and noted by the Audit & Risk Committee in the second quarter, thereby achieving the annual APP target, albeit one quarter later than planned. The Council embarked on a process of consolidating the separate Governance, Risk and Compliance components of previously approved frameworks into an integrated GRC approach at the beginning of the financial year, as approved by the Board. The Council successfully

The Council’s progress against the achievement of each of the targeted outcomes set out in paragraph 4.1, and the intended outputs related to those outcomes, are summarised as follows. For ease of reference, the same numbering is used for the outcomes as that used in the Table in paragraph 4.2.2: Outcome 1: Good governance and operational efficiency underpinned by effective systems and controls are embedded. The Council made substantial progress in further embedding good governance and operational efficiency during the year under review, successfully achieving all annual indicators for the targeted output of implementing effective financial, performance reporting, compliance and risk management systems and controls. The most notable achievements included confirmation of an unqualified external audit opinion for the prior 2024/25 financial year and developing and implementing a comprehensive, integrated board-approved Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Framework. This framework was successfully used to mitigate specific strategic risks (see further discussion in

Ombud Council 2025/26 Annual Report

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