Mines to gain control of yellow metal assets – aims to reduce fraud

SAMAR plans to cover entire life-cycle of all assets

The Southern African Movable Asset Register (SAMAR) announced in May its plans that will allow mines, contractors, manufacturers, importers, builders, banks, insurers as well as the general public to control title and ownership of all movable assets, including yellow metal and other movable assets used during operations.

In Africa, many yellow metal assets are crudely marked and registered to businesses. However, SAMAR creates the most recent reliable record of an asset and yellow metal by updating records in real-time as changes are made by various system participants. This allows businesses to effectively manage and control the financing of assets and yellow metal not on eNaTIS throughout their lifecycle. This greatly reduces fraud, theft, double discounting, or incorrect depiction for value and insurance purposes.

Benefits for contractors

  • The value of movable assets and yellow metal financed and insured, is substantial and the risks of double financing and fraud requires additional control.
  • The identification of these assets in instances where the purchaser owing, and/or in instances of loss due to theft, is problematic for both financier and insurer.
Kyle Dutton, SAMAR

Kyle Dutton, Project Manager at SAMAR, commented: “SAMAR’s use by the industry to load their yellow metal and other movable assets will greatly reduce risk and related costs. This is extremely valuable, as unfortunately, vast sums of money are lost each year due to multiple financing on the same asset – mostly due to lack of the marking of movable assets other than roadworthy and registered vehicles. SAMAR was created to easily identify and confirm ownership, and allows both the financier and the insurer to be able to have access to a database where the owner could be linked to the specific asset in question, similar to what e-NATIS does in the registered motor environment.”

About SAMAR

Regulation 5 of the National Road Traffic Act of 1996 (Act 93 of 1996) regulates that certain motor vehicles are not allowed to be registered on to the National Traffic Information System (eNaTIS). In 2011 the Inter Provincial Policy and Procedural (IPPP) committee, instructed the NRCS to adhere to legislation and stop providing eNaTIS model numbers for those vehicles prescribed in Regulation 5. The vehicles so prescribed are vehicles not designed for public road use, in other words, vehicles that cannot legally pass a roadworthy test. In the banks controls suites the use of “title” on a eNaTIS Registration Document is utilized as the confirmation of the banks interest in the asset. Therefore, by denying access to eNaTIS for such assets the ability of applying “title” (on mainly “yellow metal”) had effectively been withdrawn. This brought about the development of SAMAR at the request of several of the banks and importers of “yellow metal” assets as a practical solution to the impasse created, however, this was not formalized across all the entities and assets involved, essentially this was a stop-gap measure. Today the risk officials at several of the institutions involved have asked for the use of SAMAR to be agreed across the industry.

www.samar.co.za