TCS expands partnership with Africa’s Standard Bank Group to centralise security settlements

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the extension of its partnership with Standard Bank Group (SBG), Africa’s largest custodian bank, to centralise and standardize its custody and securities settlement operations in over 15 markets, signaling starting of recovery of IT deal wins and renewals amidst macroeconomic uncertainties.

TCS has been working with SBG for over 25 years now. Through this extended partnership, SBG sought to upgrade its existing platform using next-generation technologies and streamlining its custody and settlement processes to “build greater resilience in its operations by having all its critical business operations running in the cloud by 2026”.

SBG runs the largest custody network in sub-Saharan Africa with $635 billion in assets under custody and administration

In the new integrated custody platform, SBG will be able to accelerate the pace of innovation and offer its customers consistent, reliable, efficient, and high-performance services.

Done through TCS BaNCS’ offerings, the platform improves straight through processing levels and helps the bank leverage a data standardization strategy that can accommodate both traditional and crypto assets.

The upgraded platform has been deployed in seven markets including in South Africa, the others will be implemented by March 2024.

Rajesh Ramsundhar, Head, Investor Services, Standard Bank, said, “Standard Bank is dedicated to transforming the technology landscape in its investor services business, with the objective of having all our critical business operations running in the cloud by 2026. We selected the TCS BaNCS Global Securities Platform to transform our custody and settlement operations with the objectives of offering a unified, consistent, and reliable experience to our customers.”

Venkateshwaran Srinivasan, Global Head, Financial Solutions, TCS, added: “We have been investing substantially in our securities solutions to ensure that they bring the best-in-class processing efficiency and API capabilities to help our customers offer a superior experience to their clients. With this rollout across all their Africa operations, SBG will be able to offer a consistent experience and service level across markets and enable enhanced data strategies.”

In South Africa, more than 95 percent of custody transactions are handled by TCS BaNCS’ solution.