In May 2024, securities settlement in the United States, Canada, and Mexico will move from two days to one (T+2 to T+1). While the move will, in theory, reduce counterparty and market risk and lower margin requirements, it will have a significant knock-on effect on the global foreign exchange markets (FX). Jason Vitale, global head
Automation
T+1: What Now?
T+1 has clearly arrived in the West, although the views on how this has impacted day-to-day processing will extend globally.
Whether industry firms have taken a tactical or strategic technological approach to covering this market change, the role of technology and the importance of having a highly modernized solution have never been greater.
So, how is technology playing a role – and what are the most important areas that we have seen come through in the transition to T+1 for market participants.
Automation
T+1 in Canada: Same Goal, Different Plays
Canada and the U.S. have shared a common standard securities settlement cycle for longer than most in the industry today can remember. Industry participants in both countries successfully moved from a standard cycle of five to three business days after trade date (from T+5 to T+3) in 1995 and from T+3 to T+2 in 2017.
KYC
How the Unique Transaction Identifier Solves Post-Trade Challenges
Securities settlement fails are costing the industry billions in operational overheads and fees today. This is only intensifying under the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) Settlement Discipline Regime in Europe and shortening settlement cycles. With the deadline for T+1 settlement implementation coming up on May 28, 2024, in the U.S., solving post-trade frictions that get
KYC
Turning Margining Challenges into Solutions
(Editor’s Note: In this guest post for the Bull Run, Varqa Abyaneh, chief product officer from Quantile Technologies Ltd. focuses on industry participants grappling with the costs of funding multiple margin requirements globally.) Designed to improve the safety and stability of markets, regulation inevitably increases the cost of trading. Participants are still expected to deliver
Back-Office
3 Pressures Making Post-Trade Reconciliations More Difficult in 2016
Last month, FTF brought together financial services operations leaders, fintech solutions providers, and top-of-the-line financial consultants to discuss the state of post-trade reconciliations. Post-trade reconciliations: The concept of reconciliations is to compare one set of records with another. Operations teams reconcile post-trade: before that trade is settled and afterwards to confirm that no mistakes (also known
Buy-Side
Valuation Considerations for Illiquid OTC Derivatives
Guest Contributor: Matthew McFarland, Director, Business Development, CBOE Mandated clearing of certain interest rate swaps and credit default swaps was recently completed with the addition of Category 3 participants on September 9. While the advent of mandatory clearing presents several challenges, one aspect that has garnered little attention is valuations. OTC market participants, accustomed to valuations
Clearing and Settlement
Clearinghouses, the Fed and “Bailouts”
Guest Contributor: Michael Walinskas, Chief Risk Officer, OCC The financial crisis of 2008 saw excessive risks in the over-the-counter market and lead to governmental intervention in a “Wall Street bailout” while listed markets and their central counterparty (CCP) clearinghouses performed well. This prompted global legislators and regulators to push for more OTC transactions to be
Back-Office
The Future of Post-Trade Derivatives Processing
Guest Contributor: Laurent Jacquemin, executive vice president, post-trade derivatives, SunGard’s capital markets business In the derivatives industry, significant, year-over-year transaction volume growth has become the norm. With high-frequency trading driving up the volumes of trades to hundreds of thousands or even millions per day, derivatives market participants must be able to manage these higher volumes.
Clearing and Settlement
A Truly Canadian Solution?
Guest Contributor: Steven Grob, Director Group Strategy, Fidessa The merger mania in the exchange space took another twist last week when a consortium of Canada’s largest banks and pension funds put forward an alternative offer for TMX in an attempt to scupper the LSE Group’s own merger proposals with the Canadian exchange. There’s a clue
