With almost two decades of experience in financial services, Hitesh Harduth has worked his way up the ladder to lead securities lending for Standard Bank. Here, he has learnt to navigate the twists and turns of the industry, and has his eyes set on expanding the bank’s remit.
His career at Standard Bank began in 2006 when he took on the role of contractor. But it was not until a trader on the securities lending desk, Jennifer Apple, introduced the concepts of the practice that Harduth felt a spark of inspiration and drive to join this niche market.
Within a year, he moved from the settlement offices into the securities lending back office, where he worked on settlement returns. An opportunity later presented itself which allowed for Harduth to move into the collateral space — where he later became a manager. Moving to the front office in 2010, Harduth worked his way up from junior trader to head trader. In 2021, he took over as head of securities lending.
Speaking of his time in the securities lending market, Harduth says: “In terms of experience, every day brings something new. I've built long-standing relationships with some of my clients who have also moved from operations into front office trading. I’m a bit of a people's person, so that does help. Over time, you build relationships.”
From knowing next to nothing of the financial industry, to leading the bank’s securities lending department, Harduth highlights the importance of investment in courses such as Plumb Line — where he achieved a Masters in Introduction to Financial Markets. The course helped Harduth achieve a good concept of the capital markets and a view into the investor services space, as well as custody, trustees, securities lending, and futures clearing.
In addition, he praises the support of mentors. “I was also quite fortunate to have good mentors during my career at the bank — Maria Jenner, Juanita Taylor, and Llewellyn Ford were very good mentors who saw my talent and helped me to grow into who I am today.”
He continues: “I've got a great team that works with me. I hired some of them in the collateral space back in 2008-09, and they've been with me up until today. They speak ‘me’, so it does help to have a good team that works with you, it lightens the load.”
Adapting to the current climate
Financial markets are facing a number of challenges including regulatory changes and impacts from a new US administration — in particular, the set of tariffs imposed in early April by President Trump, which has affected a number of countries, including the UK, China, and Canada.
According to Harduth, it has been a rough time of late. He notes: “When it happened, there was mass progression in the markets globally. The product is positioned in such a way that it takes advantage of these volatilities in the market.
“We saw a massive amount of shorting happening across our client base. So activity ramped up quite substantially in the equities market, and still is at the moment. That volatility drove growth in our business. We're seeing a similar spike in our utilisation — which is likely to be short-term until this stabilises.”
This trend was also seen during the Covid-19 pandemic in March, April, and May, and then again during the African Bank crisis. These major market events are where securities lending thrives. Harduth says here is where Standard Bank has been able to provide liquidity into the market so clients can execute their strategies.
“Being the largest lending desk, it does help, because we've got a lot of inventory to be able to facilitate these shorts.” He adds: “Also, within the South African political climate, the Government of National Unity instability happened. With the timing of the two, it caused massive volatility in the South African market specifically.”
Helping to tackle other challenges within the market, Standard Bank joined the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) in August 2024. The driver of the decision to become a member was to align with global standards when implementing new agreements, schedules, as well as negotiating — especially now that the bank is moving to open its mandates to trade more in foreign assets.
“My colleague Juanita was the key to getting the ISLA membership. With this new regulation coming through, in terms of initial margin and variation margin, we wanted to understand from our partnership with ISLA what's happening overseas, to get the legal insights from the team,” Harduth explains.
In addition, the way in which banks are currently optimising collateral became another driver to join the association. Collateral has been a buzzword in the industry — something that Harduth says is evolving out of securities lending. “It's not just a securities lending function — it's bigger than securities lending.”
Expanding in Africa
As a product owner, Harduth says his mandate is to expand into Africa and be in step with Standard Bank’s commitment to the region: “Africa is our home, and we drive her growth”.
The bank is focused on three core markets: Nigeria, Kenya, and Botswana. Harduth and the team have been working relentlessly to get the countries to meet a global standard — something that he says can be achieved through a partnership with ISLA.
Nigeria
Securities lending is live in Nigeria. According to Harduth, six agents are licensed in the country, with Stanbic IBTC Nigeria being the only firm to actively pursue the practice. “The head of Investor Services in Nigeria has done a lot of work with education, working with regulators on what needs to be changed,” he notes.
Within the Standard Bank team, Juanita Taylor was key to securing the launch of the securities lending product in Nigeria in 2015. Much regulation needed to be changed, but now the bank says it has almost received the “green light” to begin trading again.
Feeling confident, Harduth says: “There's been a lot of demand on the bond market. We're waiting for approval from the pension fund committee to allow pension funds to do lending — that will unlock a lot of liquidity, because the pension funds hold a lot of the bond liquidity at the moment. Once that is released, we see the market ramping up quite rapidly in Nigeria.”
Kenya
In Kenya, the securities lending product is also live. However, Harduth indicates that it does not yet align with South Africa in terms of its model. The country has an on-screen-based model. When that went live, Standard Bank opted not to go live with them, as the bank prefers a bilateral model, which is more in keeping with the Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (GMSLA). This agreement may be used as a standard master agreement for securities lending transactions in the cross-border market, according to ISLA.
A few years following the go-live of Kenya’s on-screen-based model, the country was “not seeing a lot of activity” and therefore inquired about a bilateral, GMSLA-style model.
“We did a lot of education with the market, explained to them how it works, the benefits, and so forth,” Harduth explains. “And then last year, around October, the regulator set up a taskforce to go through the two models, in terms of what regulations need to change and what needs to happen.”
So far, the country has made ground in aligning with a global standard. Harduth highlights that Kenya will be able to adopt the GMSLA, have both models (bilateral and on-screen), and can use one agreement under those two models.
He continues: “We've asked the regulator to get a legal opinion that says, with adopting GMSLA, the GMSLA is then recognised as the master netting in the event of default, and that provides comfort to our offshore lenders and to ourselves — we’re doing the same in Botswana.”
Botswana
In Botswana, the stock exchange has securities lending approved. The priorities now are to ensure regulations are in place to facilitate this; attain approval from the authority to allow for pension funds to do lending; and to recognise GMSLA.
“It's moving a little bit faster in Botswana, because we've learned lessons between Kenya and Nigeria, and they're a lot more open to getting this product rolling because they made some regulation changes in terms of getting investments back into Botswana,” he confirms.
“There's only so much liquidity in the country, so they see securities learning as a gateway to unlock a lot more liquidity.”
At the core
Looking forward, Harduth reviews the core priorities for Standard Bank over the next 12 months — at the top of the list is the bank’s work to future-proof the business.
Currently, the bank is focused on getting its platform replacement project up and running. Harduth predicts that in the next few weeks, the bank will have a new vendor selected, following which, it will begin the implementation project to onboard a new platform.
“We need to future-proof the business. We're the last business of Investor Services at Standard Bank to modernise our platform,” he comments.
“The last platform upgrade was in 2010, and we're still sitting on the same code — so now we want to replace the platform with a new vendor, and that's going to help us tap into global securities lending, giving our clients access to global markets trading in Europe, London, or in the US. At the moment, we're very limited in terms of what we can do because of system constraints.”
As mentioned previously, Standard Bank is working to expand to other African countries, and so Harduth is eager to “switch on” Kenya and Botswana, and to start trading and recognising revenue there. He hopes that in the next year, the bank will be able to book a trade in Kenya.
“Our other focus is to drum up the hype for these countries and interest in these countries — so, in Nigeria, once PENCOM approves regulation to allow pension funds to participate in securities lending, we will be able to unlock the much-needed liquidity,” he explains.
The bank is also focused on holding its market share in South Africa. He concludes: “Being the largest desk comes with the challenge of client retention. There's always someone knocking on the door to take your share. We’re currently in a client retention mode and making sure that we satisfy our clients to the best of our ability.”
Next interview →
Alternative Investment Management Association
Drew Nicol
Image: Hitesh Harduth 
.jpg)