
We learned in 2020 that unexpected events can change the course of your company’s future.
As André Nortjé, CEO of Strate, says: “Change is the only constant, so if you are exceptional at managing it by taking people along on the journey, this will differentiate you.”
As South Africa’s principal central securities depository and central collateral platform, Strate serves the financial market through the safekeeping of the legal, digital record of securities ownership, providing associated settlement and asset services, and facilitating the reuse of securities to benefit the economy.
André has extensive experience across multiple financial services disciplines and understands the complexities of leading a multi-national organisation. He firmly believes that the fundamentals have to be in place in order to handle business growth and change. For this reason, André supports the documentation of all Strate’s processes on BluePrintBI. BluePrintBI forms a central repository for standardised processes and allows for the analysis of data to gain valuable management insights. Furthermore, it allows for tweaking of an AS-IS model when creating a new TO-BE model in times of transformation.
The key roles and responsibilities to ensure success are defined as follows:

Strate’s EXCO and Senior Management have bought into and driven the initiative to ensure that the corporate behaviors support the clear documentation of all processes.
Candice Sew, from the Risk and Compliance team, is leading the implementation of BluePrintBI at Strate. All teams are shown how to document their processes in an easy-to-understand MS Excel template that is uploaded to BluePrintBI. Teams are able to view their detailed textual reports and process flow documents quickly and effortlessly.
Monthly Management Reports provide details on progress, technology usage, risk and control coverage, areas of inefficiencies, and other useful insights.
All staff members recognise the value of having clear role definition and accountability.
By the end of 2021, Strate aims to have 90% of its process universe documented and enriched with information including risk and control information and areas of possible improvement. The value of having all processes documented and stored centrally in a standardised format, enables business governance, as well as business-critical scenario planning such as business continuity and disaster recovery.
Strate is a good example of a company where the commitment of senior management to good overall governance is followed from the strategic to the operational level.