A. EU: In its final report, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) recommended that 11 October 2027 is the optimal date for the transition to T+1 in the EU. The European Commission has proposed a targeted draft legislative change through amending CSDR. The EU has also created in parallel the EU T+1 Governance Structure to help prepare the transition.

Switzerland and Liechtenstein: In its press release, the Swiss Securities Post-Trade Council (swissSPTC) recommended that the transition to a T+1 settlement cycle for the domestic markets in Switzerland and Liechtenstein should occur in October 2027.

UK: In its implementation plan, the UK’s Accelerated Settlement Taskforce (UK AST) recommended that the first day of UK cash securities trading for settlement on a T+1 cycle should be 11 October 2027. The UK government has accepted this recommendation and will legislate for T+1 to be mandatory from this date forward.

A. For more information on which instruments / transaction types are proposed to be in scope refer to:

• Sections 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 of the UK AST implementation plan
• Section 3.3.2.1 of ESMA’s final report

A. Today, approximately 55% of global market activities are settling on T+1. This is expected to reach 85-90% by 2028 as markets globally move to accelerated settlement cycles. Standardizing settlement cycles globally will enhance operational and capital efficiency, improve liquidity, as well as reduce risks, and harmonization across jurisdictions will create a cohesive post-trade environment that functions efficiently and effectively.

Across Europe, the commitment of the UK and EU authorities to support a move to T+1 will provide regulatory certainty, thereby encouraging market participants to make the necessary investments to automate manual processes, leading to increased operational efficiency and resiliency, and reducing the risk of settlement failure.

A. In the US, the move to a shortened settlement cycle has driven reductions in risk and clearing fund requirements as well as greater operational efficiencies. At the same time, trade fail rates have remained stable despite some initial concerns that they might rise sharply. The T+1 After Action Report, issued by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), Investment Company Institute (ICI) and DTCC, concluded that T+1 has ultimately provided the appropriate balance between increasing efficiencies and successfully mitigating risk for the industry.

The UK AST had a dedicated technical workstream that focused on lessons learned form the US T+1 migration, which deep dived into numerous topics such as analysis and rulemaking, allocation, confirmation and settlement instructions, FX and funding, corporate actions, dual listed securities, foreign investors and securities lending. The feedback from these groups went into the overall UK T+1 recommendations that were published in February 2025.

As observed in the US’ move to T+1 settlement, the automation of post-trade processes is critical to achieving T+1 settlement: the faster and more accurately a trade is matched between buyer and seller, the higher the likelihood it will settle on the intended settlement date. Automation initiatives are key to driving efficiency, reducing risk and enhancing transparency in post-trade processes across jurisdictions.

In addition, the US experience demonstrated that industry collaboration, engagement and education is crucial to coordinate preparations for a successful transition to T+1. By leveraging greater levels of automation, collaborating and coordinating across the industry and jurisdictions, firms will be best prepared for an accelerated settlement cycle.

A. While the US’ successful transition to T+1 provides valuable experience and best practices to market participants, such as the importance of industry collaboration, regulatory mandate and global co-ordination, the European Union’s post-trade landscape brings unique challenges and complexities, including the number of CSDs and clearing houses, operating on different processing schedules and operational frameworks. In particular, the EU has added complexity due to the different tax and legal systems across the 27 countries, as well as a high number of stakeholders in different jurisdictions. In the UK and Switzerland, the number of providers of CCP and CSD services are similar to the US so the operational complexities are reduced.

A. Regulatory compliance is essential when implementing T+1 programs. While regulations are similar across markets, firms must consider timelines, deadlines, and automation needs. Firms need clear policies and procedures tailored to their market roles—whether infrastructure provider, broker dealer, or custodian—to meet regulatory requirements. Systems should be in place to support these policies.

DTCC Consulting Services advises firms starting T+1 preparation to conduct an internal impact assessment to gauge how regulations affect their business and operations. This includes evaluating client impacts and streamlining processes for a smooth client experience. Early preparation is key and allows more time to address gaps and enhance efficiency.

In its implementation plan, the UK AST recommends that all allocation and confirmation processing should be carried out electronically and no later than 23:59 UK time on T+0. By leveraging automated post-trade solutions, market participants can streamline and accelerate their operations, ensuring that transactions move to settlement quickly and correctly, and achieving T+1.

In addition, the UK AST recommends that market participants implement the Core Principles and templates contained in the Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) Standard for Sharing of Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs). The Standard emphasises the importance of entering and managing SSI via electronic solutions that allow for standardisation and pre-authentication of settlement instructions, and which facilitate Straight-Through-Processing. Inaccurate or incomplete SSIs are one of the leading causes of settlement failures, and with a shorter settlement cycle providing less time to address these issues, it is essential that the industry transitions away from the manual sharing of SSIs.

A. DTCC Consulting Services enables our clients to improve their post trade efficiency with a targeted offering that helps market participants to overcome the challenges presented by the evolving securities landscape – both regionally and globally. Through detailed diagnostic assessment, Operating Model design, and delivery management we will help your firm identify and implement the right controls and process enhancements, benchmark your performance against peers, address settlement fails, revamp your technical architecture, optimize your overall trade processing operations, and more.

Our solutions help firms achieve the level of automation required to meet accelerated settlement timelines and clients who use our Institutional Trade Processing (ITP) post-trade solutions are already meeting T+1 obligations in US securities markets. The CTM® platform processed over 27 million cash securities transactions across EMEA markets in 2024. Additionally ALERT® has approximately 7 million EMEA related SSIs stored, with over half of these being managed by global source providers such as global custodians, and prime brokers. ALERT not only acts as a repository for securities SSIs, it also maintains FX and cash SSIs. In addition to the speed of allocation and confirmation, ITP can also help with the quality of information being provided. CTM has the ability to enrich additional information required for settlement such as Place of Settlement (PSET) and also the Standing Settlement Instructions (SSIs) from the ALERT SSI repository. This allows our clients to lock in non-economic reference data to further mitigate settlement risk.