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Standard Bank has partnered with tech-company Microsoft to accelerate the digital transformation of the Bank and further drive the Africa’s growth. The Bank’s growing investment in the Microsoft Cloud will enable the innovation, efficiencies, and resilience required to respond to market dynamics and customer needs.

The tow companies have for over 3 decades worked together in migrating workloads, applications, and platforms to Microsoft Azure to drive organizational efficiencies. They have also involved a 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,” said Standard Bank Group CEO, Sim Tshabalala.

The companies will do the following as part of the partnership.

  1. Establish the African Digital Foundry (The Foundry), a strategic alliance, for Standard Bank and Microsoft to collaborate to co-create unique solutions through new technology.
  2. Bring together their resources and knowledge to provide youth with the relevant digital skills needed to secure future-ready jobs and equip SMEs with digital skills and capabilities.
  3. Standard Bank and Microsoft, through the Foundry, will co-create and execute joint go-to-market digital services related to trade, payment, and risk-based (lending and insurance) solutions. They will also develop ecosystems enabling digital trading to facilitate Africa’s growth.

In addition, the partnership will drive digital skills development, boost youth employment, and accelerate the growth of SMEs in Africa.

Microsoft and Standard Bank plan to leverage their combined research, industry, partner and start-up programs to impact Africa using technology such as mixed reality and artificial intelligence.