Tata Consultancy Services has expanded its partnership with the Standard Bank Group in order to provide improved solution levels across 15 markets in Africa. Following this announcement, Standard Bank Group will provide its suite of offerings and services in order to centralise and standardise its custody and securities settlement operations in multiple markets across Africa, together with TCS BaNCS’s Global Securities Processing Platform.

With the custody platform being integrated, SBG will be given the possibility to accelerate the pace of improvement and to provide its clients with consistent, efficient, and reliable products. TCS BaNCS’ set of APIs and its modern technology architecture are set to enable the bank to connect to a wider financial services ecosystem. This will deliver users new, personalised, and secure digital tools.

More information on the partnership The Standard Bank Group aims to upgrade its existing platform and to leverage optimised, efficient, and secure technologies in order to further streamline its custody and settlement processes. In addition, the company will focus on designing improved resilience in its capabilities and operations by having all of its critical business solutions running in the cloud by 2026. The Tata Consultancy Services’ Global Securities Platform was developed as a cloud-ready consolidated product that improves the manner in which both buy-side and sell-side firms implement error-proof, STP-enabled, scalable processes for clearing, settlement, trade processing, custody, corporate actions administration, as well as portfolio accounting.

The platform is set to enable real-time settlement, high-performance solutions, as well as reporting products from customers and clients. In addition, it also improves straight-through processing levels, while focusing on enabling the bank to use a data standardisation strategy that will accommodate both traditional and crypto assets. It will also make the adoption of the ISO20022 easier and faster.

According to the press release, the platform has already been deployed in seven markets, including South Africa, and the rest will be implemented by March 2024.  Tata Consultancy Services’ recent partnership The company had multiple partnerships and deals in the last couple of months, covering several geographic areas around the world. At the beginning of September 2023, the US-based risk, compliance, and fraud prevention solution provider FundingShield announced its collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services. The strategic deal focused on improving the protection of lenders, sellers, and home buyers against the growing incidents of wire and title fraud.

As the increasing prevalence of cybersecurity risks represents a challenge for companies and enterprises, lenders need to place a greater emphasis on data integrity in order to detect and prevent possible fraudulent activities. TCS customers were given direct access to FundingShield’s ecosystem, allowing them to uphold high standards when it comes to bank account verification, counterparty compliance, and data integrity. In addition, the company also focused on achieving cost savings and risk mitigation.

Earlier in July 2023, TCS BaNCS announced its collaboration with the Banque Saudi Fransi, providing solutions in order for the latter to augment its domestic and international real-time payment processing. BSF selected TCS BaNCS for simplifying and digitalising its IT landscape across lending, payments, and deposits. .