From 1999 to 2001, there was economic crisis occasioned by challenging external environment and economic shocks that adversely affected the financial system development of Turkey. This crisis was countered by the IMF stabilization program of 2000-2001. On the contrary, South Africa has a relatively large and sophisticated financial system with key players covering the banking institutions, insurance firms and the stock market. Thus, the motivation of the present study was to compare the financial system development of South Africa and Turkey. The comparison of the financial system development was done along financial institutions, financial instruments and financial regulations. The Public Interest Theory of Regulation and the financial intermediation theory provided anchorage to the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design focusing on South Africa and Turkey. Secondary data was collected covering a period of 10 years and the analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics covering independent t-test and one way Analysis of Variance. From the results, while the study neither failed to accept nor reject hypothesis H01, it rejected hypothesis H02 and accepted hypothesis H03. The study recommends that the senior managers of the commercial banks in Turkey and South Africa as well as the insurance firms should invest more resources in salesmanship so as to increase market presence and thus more penetration and market depth.