Assurdly and CSCS: Enhancing the Backbone of Nigeria’s Capital Market

Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) sits at the heart of Nigeria’s capital market, quietly enabling the trust that allows millions of transactions to move seamlessly between brokers, registrars, custodians, and investors. Every cleared trade, every settled transaction, and every recorded holding depends on infrastructure that works consistently and without failure.

As transaction volumes increase and market participants demand faster, more transparent digital interactions, CSCS has continued to strengthen its technology backbone. Two platforms represent a key step in that transformation:

• API Gateway - developed to improve direct system integration and reduce manual delays across market participants.
• RegConnect - designed to give registrars a more consistent and streamlined way to manage uploads, approvals, and investor servicing.

However, in a market where confidence underpins participation, deploying new platforms is not enough. Infrastructure must be proven. To independently validate the readiness, reliability, and real-world performance of these systems, CSCS engaged Assurdly as its assurance partner.

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The Challenge

Digital integration in the capital market is no longer a technical upgrade; it is a matter of confidence. For an institution like CSCS, introducing new platforms without independent validation carries real consequences from operational risk and slow adoption to potential erosion of trust among brokers, registrars, and other market operators.

Despite ongoing improvements, interactions shaped by legacy processes continued to create friction. Duplicated steps, inconsistent data handling, and manual interventions slowed down time-sensitive operations, introducing uncertainty into workflows that depend on accuracy and speed.

As expectations for near real-time processing continue to rise, market participants have become less tolerant of delays or ambiguity. Infrastructure reliability now directly influences transaction confidence across the market, making system performance not just a technical concern, but a reputational one.

CSCS recognised that technology alone would not resolve these challenges. To secure adoption and preserve its role as the market’s trusted backbone, the new platforms had to demonstrate consistent performance under real operating conditions supported by credible, independent assurance.

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Assurdly's Partnership With CSCS

Assurdly partnered with CSCS as a quality assurance provider, applying structured validation to confirm that API Gateway and RegConnect would deliver consistent, reliable performance ahead of full market rollout. The engagement was designed to provide assurance across the full lifecycle of platform readiness, not just functional correctness.

The engagement focused on three key layers of assurance:

• Integration and performance validation: Ensuring that API interactions across both internal and external endpoints execute reliably, without disrupting workflow continuity or data integrity.
• Operational readiness checks for RegConnect: Validating that registrar activities including uploads, approvals, and operational processes, run smoothly and do not create downstream conflicts for market participants.
• Feedback loops for improvement: Identifying gaps early and providing actionable feedback, enabling CSCS to resolve issues before live adoption and reinforce confidence rather than react to failures.

This approach reflects what stakeholders often describe as the Assurdly effect : not merely identifying defects, but strengthening platform readiness to meet the real-world expectations of a financial market environment.

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Key Outcomes And Impact

The assurance process delivered outcomes that go beyond technical validation, strengthening platform performance and market confidence:

• Improved stability and integration confidence across API Gateway: Both internal and external endpoints demonstrated predictable behaviour under testing, reducing uncertainty and ensuring smoother system interactions.
• Smoother registrar workflows on RegConnect: Manual escalations and offline follow-ups were significantly reduced, enabling more consistent and efficient operations.
• Fewer disruptions and faster recovery: Error-handling mechanisms were validated to ensure processes could recover quickly without compromising transaction integrity.
• Higher stakeholder confidence: Independent validation signalled that CSCS is modernising its infrastructure with reliability and trust at the forefront.

By addressing performance, usability, and recovery behaviours within a single assurance cycle, the platforms are now positioned for stronger adoption and reduced resistance from market participants.

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The Assurdly Stamp

In a market where confidence underpins every transaction, infrastructure upgrades must be proven, not assumed. CSCS continues to invest in digital transformation, but what sets this initiative apart is the decision to validate readiness before scaling.

Assurdly’s involvement ensured that API Gateway and RegConnect are not only fully functional but also dependable under the real-world conditions for which they were designed. This independent assurance strengthens the position of the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) as a trusted market operator and provides stakeholders with renewed confidence in the systems they rely on every day.