Interview with Mr. Jamal Jallab | Securities Depository Center of Jordan

Securities Depository Center of Jordan Posted

FEAS Secretariat spoke with the Acting Deputy CEO of Securities Depository Center of Jordan Mr. Jamal Jallab about the key strategic initiatives of SDC Jordan, technological development, COVID-19 impact, and more. 

“First of all I would like to thank you very much. This is actually a wonderful opportunity for me. I really appreciate it. I wish the best for you, for all the members of FEAS and the whole world”.

1. What are the key strategic initiatives SDC Jordan is working on at the moment?

OVER the past months, most people across the world have shifted to working from home, to no one’s surprise; it’s been an equally transformative experience for financial services institutions (FSIs). Now, another transformation is emerging: While the pandemic appears far from over, we have to make balance; go more further on online working for our employees and members, guarantee the cyber security and business continuity, serving investor all times; these issues on one hand and on another hand the health requirements for all…?We have responded to these challenges by putting initiatives to strengthen the activities in place to make balance among all these issues.

The SDC main operations include:

• Registration of securities. 
• Deposit of securities. 
• Transfer of ownership and safekeeping of securities. 
• Clearance and settlement of securities transactions.

While the pandemic appears far from over, we have to make balance; go more further on online working for our employees and members, guarantee the cyber security and business continuity, serving investor all times.

2. Technological development and innovations are one of the SDC Jordan’s pillars of development, great examples for this are Upgrade of core business App “SCORPIO”,  the development of ePortfolio for investors, SMS service  for investors. What can You tell us about the development of each of these projects? Please, tell us a little bit about the positive impact that these initiatives made on the community.

Great ; I believe that the technology nowadays, is playing a substantial role in financial institutions. SDC started business from day one digitally, as our services are grow the technology grow with us.

 SCORPIO, an SDC-designed and implemented system, is a bilingual system that is a complete solution for the registration, deposit, safe-keeping and transfer of securities ownership. SCORPIO consists of a number of systems and modules for registration, depository, clearing and settlement also provides a mechanism for risk management and surveillance of clearing and settlement. Its modules include brokers, issuers, custodian, surveillance and auditing, pledge, lien and website services systems, which taken together enable the SDC to provide investors with a wide range of services.

The upgrade project of SCORPIO is big enhancement in efficiency, security, availability and connectivity move the application from two tier architecture  to three tier architecture and from desk top application to web-enable one .

This enhancement helps to be ready to move to working remotely for both SDC employees and members and make SDC business continuity more efficient.

Both ePortfolio and SMS services were designed to enable the investor to follow up his investments in the capital market. ePortfolio enable the investor to view the information related to his deposited securities’ accounts, to view all transactions executed to his accounts, and to obtain statements or documents regarding his ownership. Beside to this service, the SMS service which is an online alerting service that enables investors to follow the complementary trading operations on their accounts from the sale and / or purchase of securities at the Amman Stock Exchange, to be followed by the launch of the second phase, which includes the development of the service, so that investors can follow all the movements that take place on their accounts, such as transfers, corporate actions, ownership restrictions, etc. Also we are working on phase two of the ePortfolio to be more interactive and provide investors with more on line services. 

3. The world goes digital, and the same does SDC Jordan: SDC Jordan is actively enhancing the secure and qualified web development and goes Paperless using EDMS. How are these big changes happening in the organization, and does Covid-19 impact the process of activating new technologies?

As I said before SDC started digitally and rely on technology in managing the operations and services for SDC’s member or invertors , so to have the picture completed , we are in final stage of implementing enterprise document management system , this help us to go with paperless environment and to enhance the employees efficiency and productivity.  Yes,  Covid-19 pandemic make more stress on us to speed up our processes to activating  such a  new technology.

4. Today’s world is facing several challenges and how we all come together as a community will make a difference in moving forward. How are you encouraging your employees to stay positive and to avoid negativity in the workplace?

 To make the employees to stay positive and to avoid negativity in the workplace, Believe me this the most important thing that we have to focus on nowadays so to this end, several initiatives have been adopted, including creating a safer work environment, reducing the number of employees on the site and increasing remote work, and giving employees who have family or sick conditions a paid leave.

5. In your personal opinion, what will life look like after COVID-19 pandemic? What are the major challenges that humanity will face in the near future?

I believe that a lot of habits and behaviors will change and also the interests of humanity will change and the list of priorities for us all will be filtered, the Fintech and digitization will be one of the major this we will be focus on when it becomes to manage our business . We will rely more on audio and video communication than on traditional methods. The world now is concentrating on social distancing. Financial sector will be different: payments, transfers of money will be through smartphones, through applications. 

I believe that humanity will face a set of challenges, the most important of which is adapting to physical distancing, human relations, in addition to finding solutions to unemployment and the growing problem of poverty.

So I think that the societies and countries have to be more cooperative in order to face these challenges.

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