Global Finance honors the financial institutions modernizing sub-custody.
Africa
STANDARD BANK
Standard Bank offers the most comprehensive custody franchise on the continent through its powerful range of solutions and market expertise, providing international investors with secure and efficient access to regional markets. In addition to winning the regional award for Africa, Standard Bank is the country winner in Ghana (as Stanbic), Mozambique, Nigeria (as Stanbic), and South Africa. The ongoing refinement of its operations includes investment in digital innovation to provide a seamless delivery of scalable solutions to clients. Through its extensive market advocacy efforts, Standard Bank continues to advance the industry on the African continent.
This leadership has helped it capture new client mandates across its franchise spanning 16 countries. The bank is focused on developing advanced data and digital solutions that provide real-time client access and connect internal and external services across the full investment value chain. This involves the application of advanced AI solutions, data analytics, and increased automation for greater transparency with securities transactions and the monitoring and reporting of client portfolios. This has resulted in improvements in accuracy, speed, and service reliability, with a near 100% digital settlement rate.
Standard Bank’s business model emphasizes consistent product delivery, service efficiency, and scale of operations, including a flexible model allowing clients to utilize both direct in-country relationships and centralized operating structures from the bank’s South African hub. These services are integrated with the bank’s cash management and foreign-exchange (FX) solutions to provide a complete range of services. To cultivate and deepen client relationships, each country in the bank’s footprint offers dedicated industry specialists who provide clients with real-time market intelligence.
Through ongoing engagement with regulators and industry participants, the bank aims to be a catalyst, bringing new capabilities to market with improved efficiency and security to better serve domestic and global investors. More broadly, with key industry initiatives including settlement-cycle compression across the continent and upgrades to central securities depositories, the bank exhibits its leadership by providing operational guidance for implementation, system testing, and coordination of industry participation.
