Strate is pleased to announce that we will resume the provision of Beneficial Ownership Register (BOR) data services to clients from 1 March 2023.  

Following the implementation of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the legal guidance given to Strate at the time to terminate our data services in July 2021, we embarked on an extensive engagement process with our regulators and industry players. We also sought further input from external legal counsel in an attempt to find a way in which transparency of securities ownership could still be enabled. We wanted to ensure that we processed the BOR data in a manner that supports the spirit and purpose of POPIA while achieving the objectives of the Financial Markets Act (FMA), which is aimed at promoting fairness and transparency in the South African financial markets. We are currently in the process of implementing enhanced controls to ensure we meet these objectives.

We recognise that the data contained in the BOR is essential to the services provided by some of our clients and enables them and other stakeholders to build investor confidence in South Africa.

Should you require assistance or wish to subscribe to the BOR data service, please contact strate-registerservices@strate.co.za

Regards,

Beverley Furman

Head of Operations and Change

Our upcoming Strate Nexus features an exclusive line-up of industry leaders who will provide insights on opportunities, risks and inefficiencies within the South African financial markets – and what we can do to grow our ecosystem and attract more investment.

Strate Nexus is our platform to share valuable insights and have thought-provoking discussions with our key stakeholders. We will provide an update on the latest initiatives we are working on in fulfilling our purpose of serving the financial market in South Africa. This is also an opportunity to get feedback to ensure we stay connected to the financial market ecosystem.

Attendees can look forward to fresh ideas, new perspectives, and deep insights on the outlook for the South African financial markets over the medium term.

Our panel of leading industry experts features:

• Marilyn Ramplin, Founder & CEO Novia One Group (moderator)
• André Nortjé, CEO, Strate (Pty) Ltd
• Tim Masela, Head of the National Payment System Department, South African Reserve Bank
• Busisa Jiya, CEO of the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa
• Colin Parry, CEO of International Securities Services Association
• Astrid Ludin, Deputy Commissioner, Financial Sector Conduct Authority
• Bongi Kunene, Managing Director, Banking Association South Africa

We are looking forward to engaging with our stakeholders on how we can work together to enhance our capital markets and strengthen the overall financial market ecosystem, to the benefit of SA Inc.

For more information on Strate Nexus on 22 February contact StrateCommunication@strate.co.za

Strate and Broadridge Financial Solutions, a global fintech leader, have completed the integration of their respective end-to-end vote processing solutions to create a better proxy voting experience in South Africa . This collaboration represents a shared commitment to drive greater levels of shareholder engagement by institutional and retail investors – at both national and international levels.

Broadridge’s extensive user community, including global and domestic banks and brokers, custodians, wealth managers and local agents, can now access Strate’s e-Voting service. The e-Voting platform is delivered in collaboration with Strate and the Central Securities Depository Participants, to streamline processes and achieve operational efficiency throughout the proxy voting lifecycle in South Africa, while also supporting compliance obligations under South Africa’s Companies Act. 

“We are excited to launch our fully digital South African voting service, supporting the growing desire of investors globally who want to exercise their corporate governance entitlements in this very strategic market,” said Demi Derem, General Manager of International Investor Communication Solutions, Broadridge.

“Our successful collaboration with Strate represents another critical step in linking leading providers at the heart of financial infrastructure with our network of global investors to enable seamless investor voting and engagement.”

Firms using the service can obtain timely and accurate receipt of “golden copy” digital meeting notifications sourced directly from Strate, a significantly extended voting window (up to meeting-date-minus-one) for underlying clients, and enhanced transparency through confirmation of votes submitted.

“As a pioneer in digitisation in South Africa, Strate partners with leading global technology providers to collaborate on digitally innovative solutions, which is why we are proud to have worked with Broadridge on our e-Voting solution,” said Gregory Naicker, Strate Head of CSD Services. “Through digital innovation we integrate and connect critical players in the financial market ecosystem, leading to integrity and trust in our markets.”

“The partnership with Strate and Broadridge cements Standard Bank’s promise of delivering continuous value to our clients, offering flexibility in choosing a proxy voting execution partner,  providing better voting deadlines, delivering enhanced proxy disclosure information as well as moving towards fully digital and automated electronic voting solutions,” said Llewelyn Ford, SBSA Head of Investor Services, South Africa. “This development moves the market closer to achieving the desired level of efficiency and lowers risk in the proxy voting environment.”

Broadridge Financial Solutions  provides critical infrastructure that serves as a global communications hub enabling corporate governance by linking thousands of public companies and mutual funds to tens of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. Its technology and operations platforms underpin the daily trading of more than U.S. $9 trillion of equities, fixed income and other securities globally.

At Strate, we support the country’s transformation agenda by doing good in our communities. Through our “Do Good” initiative, our employees raise funds for non-profit organisations (NPOs) and Strate matches a percentage of the donations.

In our latest “Do Good” initiative, Strate is supporting Chairman Nigel Payne and his brother Adrian Payne, who recently completed the summer Freedom Challenge, a race across Africa, to raise funds for the Reach for a Dream Foundation.

Under the theme “Ride For A Cause”, Nigel and Adrian completed the Double Freedom Challenge – both the winter and summer challenge. This amounted to 38 days, 4 300km of extreme offroad riding with 6 600m of climbing, often carrying their bikes over South Africa’s highest mountains.

The brothers are raising money for Reach for a Dream, a South African NPO, to build a Dream Room at a community-based medical facility in Gauteng. This will be a place of fun, play, family time and dreams of hope for children undergoing life-saving treatments.

To support the brothers’ fundraising efforts, click here. Find out more about the Freedom Challenge here. Donations for this cause will qualify for a Section 18A certificate. Strate will match a certain amount of the total donations received, which will go to the Reach for a Dream Foundation.  

The Payne brothers took 17 days to complete the Summer Race across South Africa 2022 Freedom Challenge in October 2022. They were placed second in the double-up challenge.

Strate, with input from market stakeholders, has produced a corporate action handbook for the South African capital markets. The handbook provides guidance to issuers, sponsors and legal firms that plan to announce a corporate action in the South African market. It includes salient information, timelines and processing requirements.

The corporate actions handbook is now available to the wider market for review and comment.

To access the handbook click here.

To provide feedback, click here.

During the financial crisis and collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, it became evident that regulators and private sector managers were unable to readily identify the full extent of the market participants’ exposure to Lehman and the interconnectedness of financial institutions.

This gave rise to the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC), which was founded by the G20’s Financial Stability Board, establishing what is called the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) system.

The system is governed by global regulators who recognise the importance of the LEI as a key component of the financial markets which aims to reduce systemic risk and increase transparency.

An LEI is a unique numbering system (code) which allows for the identification of legally independent entities across the global financial markets.

Unique identification of parties to financial transactions underpins multiple financial stability objectives such as:

• Improved risk management in firms
• Better assessment of micro and macro prudential risks
• Facilitation of orderly resolution

It also provides many benefits to the private sector such as:

• Lowering operational risks
• Facilitating straight through processing

Global regulatory reporting is likely to become stricter and companies are encouraged and will benefit by obtaining an LEI code. Any legal entity that enters into a financial transaction is eligible to register for an LEI. However, single individuals (natural persons) are not eligible.

Companies are now able to make use of Strate as a local provider of LEI services. 

In order to be endorsed as an issuer of LEIs, Strate was required to meet a set of stringent qualifying criteria set by the Regulatory Oversight Committee. Strate’s LEI services include the ability to register, view, search, update, renew, challenge and port LEI codes for companies.

 For detailed information visit: www.lei-strate.co.za or contact Strate-LEIHelpdesk@strate.co.za

Strate has collaborated with technology company Iress to integrate our systems using an OpenAPI (application programming interface) and ISO20022 message standards to ensure future compatibility, reduce costs and improve overall efficiency.

This cost-effective integration with Iress increases opportunities for our clients to digitally connect to Strate and reduce business costs.

Belinda Kasch, Product Manager for securities lending & borrowing at Iress South Africa, says, “We were looking to reduce the technical overhead costs of proprietary message interface management gateways currently connecting Iress and Strate.”

Iress provides software to over 100 000 businesses across the financial services industry in Asia-Pacific, North America, Africa, UK and Europe.

“Strate’s strategy is to provide a range of digital connections or channels to suit clients’ requirements,” says Rudi Steenkamp, Head of Technology and Data Management at Strate. “API integration with Iress enables an additional option for the market to integrate systems with Strate.”

As South Africa’s principal central securities depository, Strate digitally connects the financial market ecosystem with world-class technology platforms. In 2021, Strate securely transmitted 91 million messages and processed 7.5 million settlements with a value of R46 trillion, servicing over a thousand clients across various market segments.

“At Strate we work closely with our clients to introduce digital solutions to meet the evolving needs of the ecosystem. This is in keeping with our purpose of serving the financial markets,” says Greg Naicker, Head of CSD Services at Strate.

For more information contact Strate CSD Services (CSD-Services@strate.co.za) or Belinda Kasch at Iress (belinda.kasch@iress.com).

Strate’s e‐Voting platform has achieved another significant milestone: the operationalisation of three new clients. Cadiz Asset Management, Visio Fund Management and Matrix Fund Managers, with combined assets under management of over R57 billion, are now live to process voting instructions via our fully digital solution.

We would like to thank Nedbank, Rand Merchant Bank and Standard Bank for the vital and ongoing collaborative role they have played in driving the successful operationalisation of their clients.

We are pleased to continue serving the financial market ecosystem through our innovative, groundbreaking e-Voting platform, which offers a fully digital secure platform to connect companies to their investors.

“The benefits of moving to Strate e-Voting have been amazing, as the end‐to‐end solution has removed all the complexity around manual intervention,” says Althea Modiselle, Head of Fund Administration at Visio Fund Management. “The onboarding process, staff training (requested on more than one occasion), and numerous calls for assistance were no problem to Strate who ensured that implementation was done with no hiccups.”

Through full integration with our core CSD platform, our e-Voting platform uses our existing digital legal ownership records to enable seamless and legally-binding voting on securities in the public and private markets.

e-Voting seamlessly connects issuers and investors, increasing transparency and efficiencies across the value chain.

Other benefits include:

•          Real-time voting from any location

•          Ability for voters to change their vote at any time before meeting close

•          Ability for voters to direct questions to the meeting chairperson

•          No manual intervention at any stage in the value chain

•          Improved corporate governance through interactive, audited reports

•          Data security using blockchain technology

•          A true end-to-end solution

To find out more about Strate’s e-Voting platform, please contact our e-Voting team on e-Votingteam@strate.co.za.

As South Africa’s trusted and principal central securities depository and central collateral platform, we are pleased to announce we have reached a significant milestone in expanding our offering to the OTC derivatives market.

We have gone live with our solution to provide a digital post-trade confirmation matching process for over-the-counter (OTC)  derivatives – the first new security type to be added to our platforms in over a decade.

We are now ready to offer registry, settlement, asset servicing and data services to the OTC derivatives industry, through our existing platforms, to efficiently and cost-effectively connect local buy-side and sell-side market players.

The current OTC derivatives market processes are inefficient, fragmented and largely manual, which leads to delays and errors. The local industry is faced with the challenge of new margining regulations that come into effect in February 2023, further driving the need for digital solutions. Digitisation in the OTC derivative markets will enable the connection of all key players – sell-side, buy-side, administrators and regulators – digitally, robustly and with the right level of security.

The benefits of introducing OTC derivatives into our digital financial market infrastructure include:

• Standardisation
• Interoperability
• Efficiency
• Risk mitigation
• Lower cost of trading

Our cost-effective solution for OTC derivatives is supported by FpML global standards (high-quality data at source) to enable the value chain to operate effectively and efficiently. This includes providing valid, accurate and complete information which can be used to support market transparency.

Please do not hesitate to contact Strate to discuss how we can partner with you to support your business. 

We are delighted to announce that Strate’s e‐Voting platform has reached another significant milestone: the operationalisation of Legacy Africa Fund Managers to process its voting instructions. This aligns to our purpose of serving the South African financial markets through collaborating with the market to enable efficiencies in shareholder voting.

We would like to thank Nedbank, Rand Merchant Bank and Standard Bank for the vital and ongoing collaborative role they have played in driving the successful operationalisation of their client.

We look forward to enabling Legacy onto our platform.

Godwin Sepeng, Managing Director, Legacy Africa Fund Managers, says: “Legacy Africa Fund Managers would like to thank Strate and our CSD partners for facilitating our seamless migration onto the e-Voting platform. We are delighted at the prospect of a new relationship with Strate, while we remain grateful to our CSD partners for the voting service they previously provided.

“Among the many advantages of migrating to a streamlined, end-to-end online platform is that it will enable us to improve our corporate governance responsibilities to clients (as mandated by our proxy voting guidelines and ESG policy), as well as equip us to report, maintain records and have oversight of our proxies in a more granular fashion.”

Strate e-Voting is a revolutionary, secure, web-based application used to manage shareholder meetings for South African and foreign-listed issuers. The platform provides a fully digitised experience that seamlessly connects issuers and investors, increasing transparency and efficiencies across the value chain.

Other benefits include:

• Real-time voting from any location
• Ability for voters to change their vote at any time before meeting close
• Ability for voters to direct questions to the meeting chairperson
• No manual intervention at any stage in the value chain
• Improved corporate governance through interactive, audited reports
• Data security using blockchain technology
• A true end-to-end solution

To find out more about Strate’s e-Voting platform, please email e-Votingteam@strate.co.za.