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ZSE said its mission was to provide investors with details to make informed investment decisions based on complete and timely information.
Acting chief executive officer Mr Martin Matanda said that access to the ZSE data would now be offered for free by way of ZSE data portal website visits and social media, e-mail alerts and Really Simple Syndication feeds.
But the ZSE boss said those interested in immediate commercial data feeds, delayed commercial data feeds, financial “widgets” and “plug ins” such as share price tickers and indices for news and corporate websites would have to be pay for the services.
“For the recipients of our current daily e-mails, commercial data vendors, media, brokers, pension funds, commercial banks and anyone with an interest in providing investment information on their websites or online, our transition to an online data dissemination platform means that the current manner in which we provide data to you will fall away,” said Mr Matanda.
According to a Wikipedia definition, a web (data) portal is a website that brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way.
Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information often; the user can configure which ones to display.
Apart from the standard search engines feature, web portals offer other data services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment.
Portals provide a way for enterprises and institutions to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether.
The development is only part of a number of initiatives or programmes that the local bourse is working on as it strives to bring its operations in line with the prevailing modern global standards.
Some of the initiatives to modernise the exchange’s operations include the automated trading, which has been on ZSE’s priority list for many years.
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe automated trading would preserve jobs and enhance brokers’ capacity to execute trades.
Securities Commission of Zimbabwe chief executive Mr Tafadzwa Chinamo recently said the subdued performance of the ZSE and use of the manual trading system, brokerage firms were receiving low commission.
He said automation had quadrupled trades at other securities exchanges such as Kenya, arguing that the same could happen in Zimbabwe.
Mr Chinamo said stockbrokers could not process more than 50 trades a day, but with automation they could do more than treble the figure.
He warned that if the situation at the ZSE remained unchanged, more and more brokerage firms will struggle and some may fold. Automation may drive growth of the stockbroking business.
The ZSE is also working on a paperless securities settlement system known as Central Securities Depository, now at advanced stages.
Online Reporter