Absa Group Limited has said it has successfully migrated the banking platform used by six of its African subsidiaries – in Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, Barclays Tanzania, Seychelles and Zambia – from Barclays Plc’s data centre in the United Kingdom to Absa’s data centre in South Africa.

The migration, which took place between 12 and 14 April 2019, entailed moving customer transaction-processing capability and data from IT systems owned and housed by Barclays to systems owned by Absa in South Africa.

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

Normal operations resumed on Monday, 15 April 2019, 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,” said Paul O’Flaherty, Chief Executive:
Engineering Services at Absa Group. “This demonstrates our commitment and capability in ensuring an orderly separation.”

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 (API) strategy.

In addition, knowledge transfer from the Barclays Plc 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.