AMF-UMOA: the Financial Markets Authority of the Monetary Union

What is the AMF-UMOA?

The AMF-UMOA (Financial Markets Authority of the West African Monetary Union) is the regulator of the regional financial market of the eight WAMU states. Its head office is in Abidjan. It approves market participants, supervises public offerings to savers and sanctions breaches, in an area where the BRVM is the common stock exchange.

Origin and development of the AMF-UMOA

A convention signed on 3 July 1996 created the Regional Council for Public Savings and Financial Markets (CREPMF), installed on 20 November 1997. The Conference of Heads of State of the Union, meeting in Lomé on 30 July 2018, approved the change of name to the Financial Markets Authority of the West African Monetary Union, without any substantive reform at that time.

Since 25 November 2025, the Authority has been chaired by Kossi Tenou, appointed by the WAMU Council of Ministers in extraordinary session. He succeeds the Togolese Badanam Patoki, who became Minister of the Economy. His roadmap includes harmonising regulation, strengthening the supervision of market participants and supporting the sector in the face of cybersecurity and financial innovation.

Regulation of the regional financial market by the AMF-UMOA

The Authority supervises brokerage and asset management firms (SGI), management companies of collective investment schemes and other market participants, as well as digital financial instruments and their platforms. It issues instructions: the 2023 one strengthens the monitoring of BRVM transactions, and another sets minimum requirements for information systems, including automated detection of suspicious orders.

The WAMU Council of Ministers sets its financial framework: at its session of 3 July 2026, it examined the Authority's 2026 budget and the renewal of the terms of the members of its Board, then approved its accounts for the 2025 financial year in October.

Approvals, sanctions and supervision by the AMF-UMOA

Approval opens access to the activity, and its withdrawal sanctions serious breaches of the regulations. A Sanctions Committee rules autonomously. The uniform law of 23 September 2021 on stock market offences covers insider dealing, price manipulation, the dissemination of false information and obstruction of investigations.

Penalties vary according to the offence and the status of the offender: for insider dealing by an individual, they include one to five years' imprisonment and a fine of up to ten times the unlawful gain. Managers of management companies also fall under the power of sanction of the Authority.

Protection of savers and mediation

An Ombudsman receives savers' complaints about financial products or market transactions. The statutory auditor of a supervised company is required to report any irregularities found, under a 2019 instruction.

In 2024 the Authority published a first report containing a mapping of the offences found on the market, which serves as a basis for preventing abuses.