The Nairobi Securities Exchange will acquire a new electronic trading system to replace the old system it currently uses. According to NSE’s chief executive Mr. Geoffrey Odundo, the system will be bought in the first half of 2019.
The purchase was necessitated after an embarrassing outage at the exchange that lasted for several hours on 8 January 2019. The incident was not the first time the automated trading system had failed. The system stalled in October 2018 resulting in losses for some traders.
The current trading system was bought in 2006 from a Sri Lankan IT company. It was an upgrade to the manual trading system used since the establishment of the exchange. Before the upgrade, brokers congregated at the NSE’s trading floor where they performed their trades.
The computer-based trading platform allows stockbrokers to work remotely from their offices. It also enabled securities traders to transact for more hours. Trading time at the exchange increased from three hours to six hours a day.
After using the automated trading system for approximately 13 years, it is time for an upgrade to a more efficient and multiple-services trading platform. However, the new system will need regulatory approval before it is fully operationalised.
