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Absa migrates subsidiaries' banking platform from UK to SA

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 16 Apr 2019

Absa Group has successfully migrated the banking platform used by six of its African subsidiaries - in Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, Barclays Tanzania, Seychelles and Zambia - from Barclays' data centre in the UK to Absa's data centre in SA.

In a statement this afternoon, the big four bank says the migration, which took place during 12 to 14 April, entailed moving customer transaction-processing capability and data from IT systems owned and housed by Barclays to systems owned by Absa in SA.

It says during the migration, which is part of Absa Group's separation from Barclays, banking services were temporarily unavailable but customers had been informed in advance so they could make alternative arrangements.

According to Absa, normal operations resumed on Monday, 15 April, with all branches open and all digital channels and ATM services fully restored.

"The successful completion of the project, which was large and complex and one of our key Platinum projects, is another significant milestone in Absa's separation from Barclays, due for completion in June 2020," says Paul O'Flaherty, chief executive: engineering services at Absa Group. "This demonstrates our commitment and capability in ensuring an orderly separation."

Absa believes the migration unlocks a number of benefits, including an upgrade of the bank's hardware infrastructure, enhanced resilience and preparation of systems in line with Absa's application programming interface strategy.

In addition, knowledge transfer from the Barclays technical team to local resources will enable additional flexibility and scalability, and reduce a number of risks.

Previous milestones in the separation programme include the launch of Absa's new business strategy in March 2018, achieving regulatory deconsolidation in June 2018 and launching a refreshed brand in July 2018, among other developments, the bank concludes.

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