Standard Bank and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the digital transformation of Africa’s largest financial institution and further drive the continent’s growth.
The bank’s growing investment in the Microsoft Cloud would enable the innovation, efficiencies, and resilience required to respond to market dynamics and customer needs, a statement from the bank said on Tuesday.
The partnership built on a 30-year relationship between the two companies and involved migrating workloads, applications and platforms to Microsoft Azure to drive organisational efficiencies, as well as workforce collaboration with Azure, PowerApps, Workplace Analytics and Microsoft Teams.
“Investing in the cloud will allow Standard Bank to achieve its strategy to transform from a traditional financial services company into a digital platform company, providing financial services, plus ancillary and associated services. We have adopted a cloud-first strategy, underpinned by end-to-end security and data-driven insights that will enable transformation with tangible results,” Standard Bank Group chief executive Sim Tshabalala said.
As part of the partnership, the companies would also establish the African Digital Foundry (The Foundry), a strategic alliance, for Standard Bank and Microsoft to collaborate to co-create solutions through new technology to meet the financial needs of Africa’s consumers. Through the Foundry, the companies aspired to reach 100 million customers in Africa over the next five years.
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