Two members of the Financial Services Tribunal upheld First National Bank’s decision to debar an adviser who inserted a false mark in a customer’s signature field to conceal and overcome a Know Your Customer (KYC) failure. But the judge who chaired the panel disagreed, finding that the serious misconduct did not prove that the adviser had a settled defect of character.
The split turned on what the admitted misconduct proved about the applicant’s fitness to remain a representative.
Advocate Porchia Long, with Advocate Aasifa Saldulker concurring, found that Napthalie Motanyane’s deliberate circumvention of a compliance control impugned his honesty and integrity. Judge Frans Diale Kgomo regarded the incident as an isolated serious lapse by a remorseful employee who remained capable of rehabilitation.
False mark used after KYC failure
According to the Tribunal’s decision of 5 November 2026, Motanyane, who had been an FNB representative since September 2021, opened an account for a customer on 7 August 2025. The following day, it was found that he had not scanned the customer agreement onto the bank’s Fenix system, resulting in a KYC failure.
In a handwritten statement dated 11 August 2025, Motanyane said he had tried unsuccessfully to contact the customer. He admitted: “Then I did attach the document with a false signature to by-pass the system to [be] able to close the account to avoid a KYC failure.”
The agreement contained the customer’s personal details, tax-residency declarations, and acceptance of FNB’s terms and conditions.
Motanyane used a colleague’s computer because he could not log on to his own. The colleague said she believed he would log in to his own Fenix profile. When she saw him signing the agreement and asked why he was doing so without the customer present, he replied: “Don’t worry this is nothing serious.” She realised only after he had left that he had used her profile.
At his disciplinary inquiry, Motanyane said the system would not permit the document to be attached without a signature or mark. He said he had not looked at the customer’s genuine signature before entering the mark but accepted under questioning that signing for a customer amounted to forgery.
Before the Tribunal, his counsel conceded that the evidence established a deliberate false completion of the customer-signature field. Counsel acknowledged that knowingly populating a field that represented the customer’s execution or authentication of the agreement in her absence was serious.
However, counsel submitted that the evidence did not show that Motanyane had copied, traced, studied, or attempted to imitate the customer’s genuine signature. The statutory assessment of his character therefore had to proceed from the facts proved rather than an enlarged description of them.
His counsel also pointed to the absence of any unauthorised withdrawal or transfer of customer funds, unauthorised investment transaction, commission earned, misappropriation, direct financial gain, or actual financial loss to the customer or FNB. Motanyane maintained that his purpose was to close the account rather than to defraud anyone.
FNB’s FAIS panel resolved to debar him, and the debarment took effect on 12 December 2025.
The reconsideration hearing was postponed after Motanyane’s attorneys withdrew in May 2026 and he requested time to arrange new representation. At the eventual hearing on 18 September, he sought condonation for the late filing of his heads of argument. FNB did not oppose the application, and the Tribunal indicated it was disposed to grant it.
Majority finds deliberate deception
Long and Saldulker rejected Motanyane’s attempt to distinguish the false mark from an imitation of the customer’s signature. A signature on a customer agreement represented the customer’s assent. He had entered a mark in the signature block, in the customer’s absence and without authority, so that the system would accept the agreement as signed.
The majority’s reasoning was that even if the customer had instructed Motanyane to close the account, this would not establish that she had authorised him to complete the signature field on her behalf.
“The purpose was to have the system, and everyone who relies on it, treat an unsigned agreement as signed. That is deception,” the majority said. Whether the mark resembled the customer’s genuine signature was immaterial.
Long and Saldulker also rejected the submission that Motanyane had obtained no benefit. The KYC failure arose from his failure to scan the agreement, and the false completion concealed that failure. The majority held that the benefit did not have to be financial. Concealing the compliance failure enabled Motanyane to avoid its potential reputational consequences.
The surrounding circumstances also indicated that Motanyane knew his conduct was wrong. The majority relied on his use of his colleague’s profile, his response when she questioned him, his concession at the disciplinary enquiry that signing for a customer was forgery, and his acknowledgement of the seriousness of the conduct in his representations to FNB.
The majority compared the case with the Tribunal decision in Madubung v Clientèle Life, in which a representative activated a policy without the customer’s consent to meet a sales target. In that decision, the Tribunal found that an intention to mislead the provider made the conduct sufficiently serious to impugn the representative’s honesty and integrity. The majority found that Motanyane had likewise intended to mislead FNB’s compliance controls.
Long and Saldulker also found that his account had changed and expanded over time. His initial statement said he could not contact the customer. At the disciplinary inquiry, he said the customer had instructed him to close the account. His later representations said the customer was aware of the steps being taken, whereas his reconsideration affidavit referred to consultation with his manager.
The majority also noted that Motanyane’s initial statement recorded that the account had been closed on 8 August 2025 after the false mark was attached. His later account was that it remained open until the branch number was changed.
The majority found that these accounts could not all be true and that the later additions had not been explained. Relying on the Tribunal’s decision in Kula v Nedbank Limited, it said factual defences raised late and without explanation carried little weight. It preferred Motanyane’s contemporaneous statement.
FNB’s reasoning criticised
The majority nevertheless identified shortcomings in FNB’s reasons for the debarment. The bank had stated: “The bank focuses on conduct, not intent, and debarment exists to protect the bank from unethical decision-making, even when representatives claim to be under pressure.”
The majority said both propositions were wrong. Honesty concerned a person’s state of mind, and debarment existed to protect the public, not the provider. It also found that FNB had quoted the considerations in section 9(3) of Board Notice 197 without weighing them.
“Nevertheless, these shortcomings do not come to the rescue of the applicant,” the majority said. The material facts were common cause and came from Motanyane himself. His misrepresentation that the customer had signed the agreement bore directly on his honesty and integrity.
The majority rejected the argument that FNB should have imposed a final warning, closer supervision, or retraining instead of debarment.
“Debarment is not a sanction chosen from a range of options,” Long and Saldulker said. Once FNB was satisfied that Motanyane no longer met the fit-and-proper requirements, section 14 obliged it to debar him. Warnings, supervision, and retraining were employment measures, not statutory alternatives to debarment.
The majority dismissed Motanyane’s application for reconsideration of the debarment, leaving it in place.
Panel chair finds an isolated lapse
Judge Kgomo accepted that Motanyane had deliberately completed the customer-signature field, that the conduct was serious, and that disciplinary action was warranted. Motanyane did not seek to withdraw his factual concessions or relitigate the disciplinary finding.
The judge considered the decisive question to be whether the proved facts established the further proposition that Motanyane no longer possessed the honesty, integrity, and good standing required of an FNB branch adviser registered as a representative.
Judge Kgomo did not accept that all the references to Motanyane’s manager were contradictory. He interpreted the evidence as indicating that Motanyane had first approached the manager for advice and had later sought assistance to close the account correctly after the false completion did not achieve that result.
He also considered the mitigating findings made during the disciplinary process. The disciplinary chairperson recorded that Motanyane had consistently received exceptional ratings and had apparently had the interests of customers and FNB at heart. He admitted the misconduct, co-operated with the investigation and enquiry, accepted responsibility, and did not attempt to hide what he had done. There was also no loss to the bank.
Judge Kgomo accepted that a clean record could not neutralise a sufficiently grave single act. However, he considered it relevant to determining whether the incident revealed “a settled defect of character or an isolated serious lapse of judgment”.
He found that the 28-year-old Motanyane had shown genuine remorse and described him as “a fallen angel and prime candidate for rehabilitation”.
More importantly for the protective purpose of debarment, Judge Kgomo said: “I cannot discern any indication that the applicant poses an ongoing risk to the public.”
The judgments diverged on the logically prior question: whether Motanyane’s conduct, assessed in its full context, established that he no longer met the fit-and-proper requirements.
Judge Kgomo found that the required “whole person” assessment had either not been undertaken or had been glossed over or improperly considered. His reasoning took account of the precise nature of the misconduct, Motanyane’s previous record, his acceptance of responsibility, his remorse, the absence of financial gain or loss, his prospects of rehabilitation, and whether he posed an ongoing risk to the public.
He also considered that insufficient regard had been given to the Tribunal’s decision in Deon Smit v Nedbank Limited.
As summarised in the dissent, the representative in that case inserted a handwritten note recording an alleged verbal instruction that a customer should receive a monthly income of R8 000. The entry was made without the customer’s knowledge.
The Tribunal considered that there had been no customer complaint or prejudice and that the representative had not personally benefited. It also took account of the far-reaching, industry-wide consequences of debarment. It concluded that the conduct, although dishonest, was not grossly so and that debarment was not justified in the circumstances.
Although every case had to be decided on its own facts, Judge Kgomo considered Motanyane’s misconduct “considerably less serious and invasive” than the conduct examined in Deon Smit.
Judge Kgomo said he would have granted the reconsideration and set aside the debarment.
