Rivkin
Following significant client growth after the global financial crisis, Australian broker Rivkin enlisted Saxo to develop a corporate app so it could upscale its advisory services.
Banking
49,000 employees
Johannesburg, South Africa
Following South Africa’s 2008 relaxation of its offshore investment restrictions, the Standard Bank of South Africa Limited saw an opportunity to expand its business.
As South Africa’s largest bank, naturally, traditional banking forms the core of Standard Bank’s business. However, it also operates as the country’s largest online stockbroker. The company already had a dedicated platform for domestic investment and sought to enable its clients to access global capital markets.
Challenge: Overcome bottlenecks and scale
To invest in offshore markets, South Africans would traditionally have required to go through either a financial advisor or an investment bank. Standard Bank sought to challenge the norm. However, due to working restrictions limiting the number of employees a firm can have performing certain tasks, Standard Bank was limited by how many new clients it could onboard.
It needed a partner who could provide a true end-to-end solution, to enable more efficient sales and onboarding, and facilitate true global market access. If Standard Bank was to offer a new, international product, it would also need to quickly come to terms with how best to distribute the offering.
Solution: Partner with a leading outsourcing provider
Saxo’s open banking solutions provided Standard Bank with the one-stop trading and investment solution it was looking for. If Standard Bank had opted to build its own solution, it could have taken upwards of two years for the firm to get to market: our solution enabled them to reduce that to less than six months.
But more importantly, rather than just providing the firm with an off-the-shelf solution, we entered into a collaboration with Standard Bank to create a local solution. We lent the bank our go-to-market expertise, sales training, tutorials, and product and marketing libraries, enabling it to master and sell its new offering as efficiently as possible.
Results: First South African bank to provide an expanded, global product range
After engaging with us, Standard Bank successfully became the first South African bank to offer an offshore trading and investment platform to its clientele. Standard Bank was able to quickly bring both local and global market access to its local retail and institutional clients. By partnering with Saxo, it managed to successfully establish and run a new business vertical with only a small team and limited overhead. Our partnership has progressed naturally in terms of product, platform and client segment. Standard Bank launched with stocks for retail investors, before broadening into multi-asset services beyond its initial scope, either directly or through an introducing broker structure. Now, Standard Bank not only leverages its self-branded Saxo front-ends, but they have also integrated our services into its own banking app (Shyft) via Saxo's OpenAPI.
Brett Duncan,
Head of retail investments, Standard Bank
Standard Bank is a preferred Saxo partner, which contributes to our facilitator model as a liquidity provider to our own direct trading business.
About Standard Bank
Africa’s largest bank by assets, Standard Bank provides a wide range of banking and financial services to clients across sub-Saharan Africa. Built on a 155-year heritage, the bank has a presence in 20 African countries and aims to facilitate investment and development flows across the continent by connecting to global financial centres. By employing a customer-centric and digital-first approach, the bank seeks to create value for all its stakeholders.
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