Africa’s Standard Bank taps India’s TCS for security settlement operations

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest information technology (IT) services firm by market cap, on Monday announced that it has expanded its partnership with Africa’s Standard Bank Group (SBG), its custody and securities settlement operations in over 15 markets with the TCS BaNCS global securities processing platform.

The Johannesburg-based bank operates the largest custody network in sub-Saharan Africa with $635 billion in assets under custody and administration, standing at the forefront of capital market development in the continent. 

SBG was looking to upgrade its existing platform and leverage next-generation technologies to further streamline its custody and settlement processes and build greater resilience in its operations by having all its critical business operations running in the cloud by 2026, according to an exchange filing.

Both have been partners for 25 years and in order to plan and execute this technology transformation, SBG turned to the IT major. 
The TCS BaNCS Global Securities Platform is a cloud-ready, single, consolidated solution, certified by SWIFT that comes with comprehensive functionality encompassing the entire capital markets value chain, helping both buy-side and sell-side firms implement robust, error-proof, STP-enabled, highly scalable processes for trade processing, clearing and settlement, custody, portfolio accounting and corporate actions administration.

The Bank will also be able to accelerate the pace of innovation and offer its customers consistent, reliable, efficient, and high-performance services. TCS BaNCS’ rich set of APIs and its technology architecture will help the bank connect to the wider financial services ecosystem, allowing it to offer customers new, personalized digital products and services.

The platform improves straight through processing levels and helps the bank leverage a data standardization strategy that can accommodate both traditional and crypto assets. It has already 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, “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, said in a statement, “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.”

Eight of the top 10 custodians worldwide run on TCS BaNCS, and in South Africa more than 95% of custody transactions are handled by the solution. Its advanced digital core and intelligent decision making using cognitive technologies and superior client servicing across multiple channels drives enterprise adoptoin, TCS said.

Meanwhile, TCS stock price went down on Monday, by -0.7%, with the stock closing at 3602.65 per share.