Africa's best bank for transaction services 2020: Standard Bank

Standard Bank’s investment in switching its trade processes from manual to digital has paid off this year, with faster processes stemming from better technology. It is the best bank for transaction services in Africa as a result. Its head of transactional products and services is Hasan Khan.

The bank has adopted four new technologies to streamline and simplify trade deals. In South Africa, it has introduced a financial distress early warning system, which uses data analytics to determine if a client could go into credit distress over a three- to six-month period.

To reduce document checking time from days to minutes, Standard Bank signed a partnership with Traydstream, a fintech that streamlines document checking and improves sanctions checking using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The bank has also worked to automate guarantees and letters of credit, as well as its non-standardized local guarantee process using robotic process automation. As a result, both standard and non-standard guarantees were processed with improved turnaround times greater than 90%.