The JSE Securities Exchange of South Africa (JSE) and Accenture have signed two agreements under which Accenture will transform and manage the exchange’s technology infrastructure on an outsourced basis. The JSE says the agreements are part of its effort to strengthen its competitive position.
“The breadth of this architecture transformation is groundbreaking within the capital markets,” says JSE Chief Operating Officer Leanne Parsons, who is overseeing the IT transformation project “As a world-class exchange, we are on a continuous drive to improve services to our customers by operating more strategically and more cost efficiently. Together, these two initiatives will enable the JSE to be more cost-effective through implementing a lower-cost, more stable and reliable technology solution that is also more responsive to business change. We expect to be able to reduce our IT operating expenses by at least 10 percent per year.”
Under a two-year information technology “transformation” agreement, Accenture will consolidate the JSE’s current technology infrastructure and re-engineer its application and data architecture. This will involve migrating the JSE’s mainframe reference data, data enrichment, information reporting, clearing, and member accounting and administration systems onto a more flexible and efficient technology platform. The new architecture will be built from a combination of off-the-shelf technology packages and custom-built applications designed to integrate easily with the internal IT systems of JSE users.
Under a separate seven-year application and infrastructure outsourcing agreement, Accenture will assume responsibility for managing multiple aspects of the JSE’s applications and technology infrastructure, as well as a number of subcontracts. The JSE will outsource its technology applications, infrastructure and services related to derivatives trading, equities and derivatives clearing, regulation, information dissemination and other business functions.
In its seven years working with the JSE, Accenture claims to have helped the exchange formulate a new global business strategy, revise its business operating model and implement global technology initiatives.
“In recent years the JSE has positioned itself to better meet internal and global business drivers brought about by increasing pressure from the marketplace and the rapidly changing financial services arena to be more cost effective,” says Raju Makanjee, a partner in Accenture’s Financial Services practice. “Under these two new agreements, we can help the JSE pursue an aggressive growth agenda in a brave new era for the global capital markets infrastructure.”
The JSE was established in 1887 and is the 14th largest exchange in the world by market capitalisation.