Research

The Cost Of Complexity

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THE DAILY COST OF FAILED AND LATE TRADES TO THE EUROPEAN MARKET

The European market comprises 31 markets, 19 Central Counterparties and 40 Central Securities Depositories.

While this scale reflects the strength of the European market, it also creates significant operational complexity. That complexity comes at a growing cost.

Failed trade volumes in Europe are growing faster than settlement volumes, highlighting the operational challenges created by fragmented data and workflows across the settlement lifecycle.

  • €0billion

    Tied up every night in failed settlements

  • €0million

    Daily cost of failed trades

  • €0million

    Daily cost of late trades

  • 0%

    Growth in failed trades in Europe in 2025

Video
4:58 min view

EXPERT PERSPECTIVES

Why Europe must act now

Europe’s move to T+1 will amplify long-standing inefficiencies across the region's post-trade ecosystem. 
 
Hear from Val Wotton, Global Head of Equities Solutions and Matt Johnson, Executive Director, ITP International Strategy as they discuss the findings from the ValueExchange report and why improving efficiency is critical for firms trading into Europe. 
 
Watch this short video to learn: 

  • The operational impact of fragmented data flows
  • The implications of Europe's move to T+1
  • The role of trade matching and automation in reducing risk 
10 challenges
contributing to rising operational costs and settlement risk
At the heart of these issues are fragmented data flows and disconnected workflows, which hinder efficiency, scalability, and resilience across market operations.

Future State Model

How trade matching reduces fails and costs

The research highlights several areas where automation and standardization could deliver meaningful improvements: 
 
Standing Settlement Instructions Management
Moving to a shared, standardized model could significantly reduce exceptions and maintenance costs. 
 
Trade Matching 
Greater automation reduces friction and improves consistency. 
 
Settlement Processing 
Automatically generating settlement instructions from matched trade data helps eliminate delays, reconcile discrepancies and reduce operational risk. 

Expected outcomes include:

  • Fewer trade fails 

  • Reduced exception handling costs 

  • Faster matching and settlement 

  • Improved funding predictability 

  • Better use of capital 

Three steps firms can take now

Discover the complete research, analysis and recommendations for improving settlement efficiency as Europe prepares for T+1. 

Download the Full Report

Are You T+1 Ready?

Meeting the challenge of T+1 settlement requires trade processing solutions that deliver scale, connectivity and resilience. Discover how our solutions help firms of all sizes and trade volumes ensure they are T+1 ready.

The data and research findings presented on this page are derived from The ValueExchange report "Post-Trade Transformation in Europe" (October 2026) unless otherwise noted.