Standard Bank

Standard Bank

In a country with strict offshore-money
regulations, Standard Bank partnered with
Saxo to bring international markets to
South African investors.

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Industry

Banking

Company size

49,000 employees

Headquarter

Johannesburg, South Africa

Provide offshore investment access to local clients

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.

Shyft: How Standard Bank offers offshore investments in their own UI via Saxo


Get a solution like Standard Bank


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.

“Saxo does not view their white labels as merely technology partners, but as true business partners.”

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. 

Hear more from Brett Duncan, Standard Bank's Head of retail investments



 


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.

Find out how Standard Bank leveraged our front-to-back functionality to successfully establish and run a new business vertical 

01 Client experience facilitation

Platforms or APIs for self-directed clients Standard Bank adapted Saxo’s proprietary trading and investment front-ends to its own brand and built bespoke apps via OpenAPI

  • Web, mobile and tablet trading via SaxoTraderGO
  • Professional-grade trading on SaxoTraderPRO
  • Intuitive investment on SaxoInvestor
FIX API trading and connectivity
  • Managed portfolio solutions for advisory and discretionary clients
  • Block trading on multiple managed accounts
  • Professional portfolio management
  • Automated managed portfolios

02 Execution and trading services

70,000+ instruments from one account
  • Asset classes include FX, CFDs, stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds
  • Single cross-margin trading environment to execute orders and manage risk
Best-in-class execution and liquidity
  • Liquidity sourced from 85 venues, multiple Tier 1 banks and ECNs
  • Integration of own-flow execution through local memberships
  • Market data service
Integrated risk management
  • Real-time position keeping and account management
  • Real-time risk and margin monitoring
  • Activity log of all trading-related activity

03 Post-trade services

Integrated custody and back-office services
  • Reconciliation, settlement and custody
  • Automatic overnight financing
  • Corporate actions processing and stock transfers
  • End-of-day and real-time reporting across front-, middle- and back-office
  • Collateral management and reporting

Regulatory reporting services
  • Consolidated reports and end-customer statements
  • MIFID II transactional reporting
  • EMIR reporting
  • Compliance reporting across 170 jurisdictions
  • Integration of own settlement services and custodian

04 Tech foundation

Connectivity and APIs
  • Federated single sign-on for client authentication
  • End-of-day file transfers for reporting and business intelligence
  • OpenAPI services to build bespoke user experiences
  • FIX API to receive tailored multi-asset liquidity with back-office services
  • Real-time trade notifications for trade, order notifications and margin call data
Client management services (CMS)

Services for white label models with undisclosed end-clients

  • Set up and manage client account and cash transactions in real time
  • Lead registration APIs for premium offerings
  • Account configuration via a client configuration management API
  • Funding and cash management tools to support real-time services
  • Self-directed, advisory and discretionary client set ups
Business management and intelligence
  • Business management and intelligence
  • Real-time lead and client administration via SaxoTools
  • Real-time back-office platform via WebConnect
  • Performance dashboards to analyse clients’ behaviour

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