A. EU: In June 2025, the EU lawmakers agreed on the final legislative changes to CSDR to shorten the settlement cycle to T+1 on 11 October 2027. The EU has also created in parallel the EU T+1 Governance Structure to help prepare the transition. The Governance Structure is composed of the T+1 Coordination Committee and an industry structure comprising the T+1 Industry Committee and a number of dedicated specialised workstreams operating under the guidance of the Industry Committee. On 30 June 2025, the EU T+1 Industry Committee published its High-Level Roadmap with recommendations to guide market participants in the transition to T+1 across the EU/EEA.

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 has published draft legislation 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:

• For the UK, sections 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 of the UK AST implementation plan
• For the EU, see section 2.1 of the EU T+1 High Level Roadmap

A. UK and EU T+1 will require allocations and confirmations to be completed on the same day as execution (no later than 23:59 in the UK and 23:00 in the EU). UK settlement instructions will need to be received by CREST (UK CSD) before 5.59am UK time on T+1.

The EU T+1 Industry Committee recommends specific timings for various “gating events”, i.e. activities and processes that occur after trades are executed. See section 3. of the EU T+1 High Level Roadmap for details on the key timings.

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 vast 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. A key theme throughout both the UK and EU T+1 reports is the imperative to enhance automation and standardisation across all stages of the post-trade lifecycle. With T+1, the window between trade execution and settlement is significantly reduced, putting considerable additional pressure on operational timelines. Improving automation in key processes (such as allocation/confirmation/trade matching) is therefore essential as markets and firms that rely on manual post-trade processes will find it difficult to achieve T+1 timelines. For instance, 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 Trade Date. Similarly, the EU T+1 High Level Roadmap recommends allocations & confirmations to be completed no later than 23:00 on Trade Date and recommends the adoption of standardised electronic messaging for the exchange of trade allocations and confirmations to enhance straight through processing.

By leveraging automated post-trade solutions, such as CTM® and ALERT®, market participants can streamline and accelerate their operations, ensuring that transactions move to settlement quickly and correctly, and achieving T+1. 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 30 million cash securities transactions across EMEA markets in 2025.

The EU T+1 High Level Roadmap identified Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs) as an inherent weak point in post-trade processing, leading to matching and settlement exceptions and potentially to settlement fails. To address this, the EU T+1 Industry Committee established a dedicated EU T+1 SSI Task Force which published SSI Market Practices in December 2025. The EU T+1 implementation Handbook also recommends objectives and deliverables for the exchange and storage of SSIs, including that SSIs are populated and exchanged STP. In the UK, the AST recommended 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. 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. DTCC’s ALERT platform is fully compliant with the FMSB standards.

We know resourcing and cost constraints can make automation seem out of reach for smaller or/and lower-volume firms, so we’ve developed a solution to help investment managers with volumes of up to 400 trades per month optimise their post-trade processes and prepare for Europe T+1. Learn More

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.

A. PSET (Place of Settlement) matching is a concern due to the number of data points, and the potential for discrepancies in settlement locations which must be resolved by brokers and custodians. ESMA’s RTS proposals recommended that PSET and place of safekeeping (PSAF) should become industry best practice to reduce the number of settlement fails.

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.

In preparation for Europe’s move to T+1 settlement in October 2027, CTM will require that both parties involved in a trade have populated the PSET field – beginning in October 2026.

A. DTCC’s 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.