This week, the Insurance Sectoral Education and Training Authority (Inseta) was rocked by another high court judgment on 8 April, which dismissed its application for leave to appeal a January 2024 court order to reinstate the accreditation of the Graduate Institute of Financial Sciences (GIFS) as an approved training service provider to the insurance industry.

A brief background to this story is that GIFS had, on a number of occasions, raised its concerns with the management and board of Inseta about maladministration and irregularities relating to extremely delayed certification of qualified learners, as well as ghost learners falsely receiving certified qualifications.

Instead of taking the GIFS claims seriously and investigating these matters, the management of Inseta, backed by the chairperson of the Inseta board, decided to launch a dubious and highly irregular investigation of alleged fraud against GIFS. Inseta then used the report of this investigation to remove GIFS’s accreditation as an Inseta-approved skills development service provider in December 2023. This led to GIFS filing a legal challenge against Inseta’s decision, to defend its credibility and its business from Inseta’s spurious action.

On 4 January 2024, the Johannesburg High Court ordered Inseta to reinstate the GIFS accreditation; this was an interim order pending the outcome of the GIFS application for a review of the Inseta decision which has still to be heard. The 8 April dismissal of the Inseta appeal means that the interim order remains in place.

“From OUTA’s perspective and after engagements with whistleblowers who have been removed from Inseta on what appears to be trumped-up charges, we believe the actions of GIFS and the whistleblowers were beginning to expose gross irregularities and potentially corrupt activities at Inseta, which in turn was becoming too much of a problem for those implicated in the maladministration and alleged corruption,” says Wayne Duvenage, OUTA CEO.

“We commend the brave and courageous actions taken by GIFS and the whistleblowers, who have stood their ground and defended themselves against the bullying action and abuse of power at Inseta. They could have looked away and said nothing about these irregularities and retained their accreditation and kept on doing business as usual. But they chose to speak out and challenge the waste of money and inconvenience suffered by the students who lost job opportunities as a result of Inseta’s gross inefficiencies.”

OUTA calls on the Inseta board members to urgently meet and apply common sense and vote with their consciences to implement an urgent independent investigation into the obvious wrongdoing at this institution. “One doesn’t have to scratch too deep to join the dots of Inseta’s irregularities,” says Duvenage.

There is also the question of millions of rands in excessive overpayment for the unnecessary procurement of new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, one which is still not fit for purpose. “This is a is typical modus operandi seen by OUTA at many government institutions, used to enrich people connected to the system,” says Duvenage.

OUTA action against Inseta

On 27 February 2024, OUTA submitted a request for information to Inseta, in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, asking for documentation on certain specified tenders. To date, OUTA has not received any response from Inseta. OUTA is in the process of launching an internal appeal to obtain these documents for its investigation.

More information

A soundclip with comment by OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage is here. 

The Johannesburg High Court judgment of 4 January 2024 is here.

The court’s dismissal of the appeal on 8 April 2024 is here.