Absa Group Moves Subsidiary Banking Platforms from UK to South Africa

The Absa group, one of Africa’s major financial service providers has announced that it has successfully moved its banking platform used by six of its African subsidiaries in Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, Tanzania, Seychelles and Zambia, from Barclays Plc’s data centre in the United Kingdom to Absa’s data centre in South Africa.

The move organized from 12^th to 14^th April entailed moving customer transaction-processing capability and data from IT systems owned and housed by Barclays to systems owned by Absa in South Africa.

Absa is after its separation from Barclays Plc re-establishing itself as an independent business focused on African markets, and so has allotted majority of its funds to rebranding, technology and separation-related projects.

Prior to the migration of the platform, the bank informed its customers of the move in advance to avoid inconveniencing them, as banking services were to be temporarily unavailable. Normal operations resumed on Monday, 15^th April, with all branches open and all digital channels and ATM services fully restored.

Paul O’Flaherty, the Chief Executive: Engineering Services at Absa Group hailed the bank’s smooth migration and attributed it to their efficiency and capability. “The successful completion of the project, which was large and complex and one of our platinum projects, is a significant milestone in Absa’s separation from Barclays, due for completion in June 2020.” he said. “This demonstrates our commitment and capability in ensuring an orderly separation.”

The benefits from the migration include an upgrade of the bank’s hardware infrastructure, enhanced resilience and preparation of systems in line with Absa’s Application Programming Interface (API) strategy. Knowledge transfer from the Barclays Plc technical team to local resources will enable additional flexibility and scalability, and reduce a number of risks.

The group will continue rebranding Barclays subsidiaries to Absa and the separation is scheduled to be completed by June 2020.