South Africa’s new stock exchange, ZAR X, listed its first companies on Monday, with Senwes and parent Senwesbel the first to join the bourse. It’s the first rival to the incumbent, the JSE, in decades.

The new stock market, which is entirely electronic, would not have been possible until recently, but advances in technology and telecommunications in South Africa have lowered barriers to entry, said ZAR X chief technology officer Jim Brent.

In a podcast interview with TechCentral, Brent said the big investments in recent years in fibre broadband and data centre facilities have made it possible for new players to enter to the market and to challenge the JSE’s supremacy.

Brent, who has a degree in applied maths and computer science from the University of Natal, has more than 20 years’ experience in the financial and ICT sectors. He has served at the level of chief information officer and chief operating officer at several retail and investment banks in Africa and the Middle East.

ZAR X was granted a licence in 2016 by the industry regulator, the Financial Services Board, to operate a stock market in South Africa. The plan is to allow companies to list cheaper and quicker than has been possible until now, while allowing people to trade in a less expensive and more efficient way.

Brent said the new bourse would not have been able to come to market without advances in technology. “The cost of setting up your own data centre … would have been exorbitant. It would have made the whole launch a lot more difficult. We’ve managed to do this, not on a shoestring [budget], but we’ve done it efficiently. Data centres and communications networks have made an enormous difference.”

The ZAR X exchange is hosted in a local data centre, with full redundancy to other sites.

Fibre broadband has made a big difference, too, he said. “It’s a lot easier to run a hosted exchange. It makes us very much more flexible in terms of disaster recovery and business connectivity.”

It is also simple for brokers to connect to the exchange, either through a “cost-effective Web portal”, or directly with a dedicated line or virtual private network connection over the Internet.

Unlike its competitor, the new exchange offers free real-time share price information and other data. It also offers real-time settlement, unlike the JSE, which takes four days to settle trades. Both bourses conduct settlement through Strate.