The composition and regulation of the financial services sector in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Zimbabwe’s financial services sector continues to be found falling short in terms of observing corporate governance principles. The majority of the problems racking the sector are due to the existence of a number of regulatory bodies regulating the components that make it up. The country is currently in the process of crafting its National Code of Corporate Governance, and unless what constitutes the financial services sector in Zimbabwe is clearly defined, specific requirements for governance in the sector likely to be contained within the Code may fail to bring sanity to it. It is in this vein that the paper seeks to define what constitutes the financial services sector in Zimbabwe. The paper outlines the composition of the financial services sector in Zimbabwe by taking a comparative approach in the scope of these institutions from a regional and international dimension vis-a-vis its dynamism. The authors adopt the documentary review research method to define the composition of the financial services sector in Zimbabwe. The paper demonstrates that Zimbabwe’s financial services sector comprises of financial banking and non-financial banking institutions. The type of institutions that fall under these two major categories does not differ from what constitutes the financial services sector in other countries but what differs is the way the sector is regulated and supervised thus making Zimbabwe’s financial services sector sophisticated.