Another Capitec employee debarred for debit order scheme to boost performance bonus

A former Capitec Bank consultant lost his bid to overturn his debarment after finding that he misrepresented debit orders.

The Financial Services Tribunal has dismissed an application by a former Capitec Bank consultant seeking to overturn his debarment after finding that he participated in a scheme that misrepresented debit-order switches and undermined the bank’s performance-monitoring processes.

The tribunal found that Vusumuzi Mtshali no longer met the honesty and integrity requirements expected of a financial services representative.

The case arose from conduct at Capitec’s Orange Farm Palm Springs Mall branch, where Mtshali worked as a service consultant.

Capitec’s investigation uncovered 162 incidents involving 329 debit-order switches over a six-month period.

The switches had all been captured as SMS switches, despite the information allegedly having been obtained from EasyPay bank statements belonging to social grant beneficiaries who banked with Grindrod Bank.

Of the 329 switches identified during the investigation, 62 were attributed to Mtshali.

The bank’s investigation focused on whether employees had deliberately classified debit-order information obtained from bank statements as SMS switches, despite the two processes having different requirements.

The tribunal heard that Capitec’s debit-order switching policy distinguished between the bank-statement and SMS methods.

Where a customer provided a bank statement, consultants were required to scan the statement and record the debit orders that the customer wanted to switch.

The SMS process was intended for situations where customers did not have bank statements available. Consultants were required to obtain the relevant information from the customer’s own cellphone.

The distinction was important because bank-statement switches were subject to validation by Capitec’s Central Conversions department, while SMS switches relied on the branch to verify the information.

The tribunal found that consultants who had access to bank statements could not simply extract information from those documents and submit it as SMS transactions.

Evidence before the tribunal indicated that the practice had allegedly been introduced by the branch’s former manager as an “action plan”.