Mumbai, Oct 24 (IANS): South Africa's central securities depository (CSD) firm Strate has selected the software product of Indian IT bellwether Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for electronic settlement of financial instruments across the country.

"Strate will use the market infrastructure solution of our financial product (BaNCS) for its equity and money market depository operations and replace its bond system," the global software major said in a statement here Friday.

The solution will also help Strate adopt multiple settlement models across asset classes to meet market-specific requirements.

"The new engagement provides Strate a single solution across asset classes to increase agility, ability to handle more products and reduce the total cost of ownership," TCS vice-president for financial solutions R. Vivekanand said in the statement.

The city-based company played a key role in providing the settlement infrastructure in the South African market, with Strate at its pivot.

As a licensed provider of post-trade products and services for financial markets, Strate facilitates e-settlement for securities, including equity, bond and derivative products like warrants, exchange traded funds, retail notes and tracker funds to the country's largest stock exchange JSE.

The depository also caters to money market securities in the South African market and equity instruments of the Namibian stock exchange.

"We have created the advanced CSDs by partnering with TCS, which built our equities system in 1998 and money markets technology over a decade later in 2009," Strate chief executive Monica Singer said on the occasion.

"The latest solution will help Strate expand and grow its services faster time-to-market and enable us to explore other products and services in other countries using our software product."