O Standard Bank and Microsoft 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 Microsoft's cloud will enable the innovation, efficiency and resilience needed to respond to market dynamics and customer needs.
This partnership builds on the 30-year relationship between the two companies and involves the migration of workloads, applications and platforms to the Microsoft Azure to drive organizational efficiency as well as workforce collaboration with Azure, PowerApps, Workplace Analytics and Microsoft Teams.
“Standard Bank's cloud strategy emphasizes the growing thrust of financial services to deliver the differentiated experiences that today's customers have come to expect,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Worldwide Commercial Business at Microsoft.
"Investing in the cloud will allow Standard Bank to achieve its strategy of transforming itself from a traditional financial services company to a digital platform company, providing financial services in addition to ancillary and associated services. We embrace a cloud-first strategy, underpinned by end-to-end security and data-driven insights that will enable transformation with tangible results ” said Sim Tshabalala, CEO of Standard Bank Group.
As part of the partnership, the companies agreed:
- Establish a strategic alliance for Standard Bank and Microsoft to collaborate to co-create unique solutions through new technologies to meet the financial needs of African consumers. Through Foundry, companies aspire to reach 100 million customers in Africa over the next five years.
- Bringing together their resources and know-how to provide young people with the relevant digital skills needed to secure future-ready jobs and equip small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with digital skills and capabilities so they can take advantage of the growing shift towards digital technologies.
Leveraging the power and reach of both organizations, the partnership will also drive the development of digital skills, boost youth employment and accelerate the growth of SMEs across the African continent.
Standard Bank and Microsoft, through Foundry, will jointly create and execute digital go-to-market services related to commerce, payment and risk-based solutions (lending and insurance). They will also develop ecosystems that enable digital commerce to facilitate Africa's growth.
