The corona virus is putting remote work to a gigantic test, and at a totally unprecedented scale. As the president announced this afternoon of an increase in the number of cases of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in the country, he also advised companies to allow their employees to work remotely outside the office; except for essential service employees. To that effect, the Nairobi Securities Exchange has advised trading participants that it is open and will provide adequate support to brokers who wish to access the market from home.
In accessing the market, NSE’s technical team has advised that the bond’s and derivatives trading will not be affected and bond dealers can trade at the comfort of their home . However, for the equity Active Trader System which the NSE upgraded last year, and which is restricted to specific pre-configured user IP address within the broker network is not technically viable to access directly away from the local broker network.
The NSE has advised trading participants (brokers) to take adequate measures to ensure their traders can remotely-access operate secure internet virtual area networks (VPNs) to facilitate traders access to equity trading platform from home.
The NSE IT will provide framework for the VPN’s to the market participants. The team has also assured those trading via the OST that their trading will not be affected, Active-Trader-Lite (Online share trading) service will not be impacted since it is provided over internet.
Globally, the largest U.S Bank JP Morgan Chase on Friday advised some of its staff to work from home, this was followed by Barclay’s Plc which confirmed that one of its employees who had been at the trading floor had tested positively for the corona virus.
Kindly note: This is an option only if a broker chooses to work from home and/or if the government issues further directives.
