I’ve spent over two decades in post-trade. Working in operations roles across the buy-side, sell-side and financial market infrastructure, I’ve seen firsthand the impact of manual and error-prone processes on post-trade efficiency.
Standing Settlement Instructions (SSIs) underpin every successful trade, yet their importance is often overlooked. Under T+1, the buffer firms have relied on to identify and fix errors under T+2 disappears. The Financial Markets Standards Board’s (FMSB’s) Core Principle 1 highlights automation of SSIs as a key step in reducing settlement risk ahead of Europe’s move to T+1 in October 2027. The FMSB has urged firms to automate SSIs by the end of 2026.
Are you T+1 ready? Learn more about accelerated settlement in Europe.
Many firms across Europe are already highly automated, but they do not operate in isolation. They depend on a network of counterparties and their ability to match under T+0 is determined by the weakest link in their chain. If their counterparties continue to rely on manual processes to share the essential details on where and how a trade should settle, the risk of trade failure is significantly increased.
The best option is to get it right the first time.
What I am seeing from firms that have made real progress is a shift in how they think about SSIs altogether. Two things stand out:
- A commitment to eliminating manual processes
Manual SSI validation and authentication is simply too slow and resource-intensive in a T+1 environment. The industry needs to adapt to position itself for future success. Yet some firms continue to focus on workarounds and make incremental improvements, either increasing resources or refining manual processes. Neither are scalable solutions. Firms that will come out on top will be those that fully automate.
Because the reality is that as long as SSIs are shared via email, spreadsheets, or non-standard formats, errors and delays will persist. And with that comes operational risk.
- The adoption of centralised, trusted data sources
Many firms are looking to AI as a means of extracting and structuring data, and it can certainly play a role. But cleaning up data only solves part of the problem.
One of the biggest shifts we are seeing is towards centralised SSI management. Firms need a way to access and share clean, validated data in real time, and that is difficult to do when information is spread across multiple systems. DTCC’s ALERT® addresses this by acting as a “golden source” for SSI data. In practice, that means the majority of SSIs in ALERT are maintained directly by custodians and prime brokers, giving firms greater confidence in the accuracy of the data and helping to reduce settlement risk.
The challenge of precision
The firms that succeed under T+1 will be the ones that remove ambiguity, eliminate manual touchpoints and ensure their data is right at the point of capture. Because in a T+1 world, there is no time to fix errors later.
Join our next Europe T+1 virtual event on 18 June where I’ll be joined by a panel of industry experts to discuss the critical role of SSIs for T+1 readiness. During our interactive discussion we’ll cover the regulatory landscape, Europe’s manual long tail and why SSIs are mission critical for T+1.