Last week, on 2 and 3 September, industry leaders gathered at PostTrade 360° in Stockholm to discuss the preparations underway across Europe ahead of the transition to T+1 settlement in October 2027.
For Euronext, one message came through clearly: the transition cannot be achieved by individual market participants working alone. It will require close cooperation across the post-trade industry, with companies preparing their processes and systems well ahead of the go-live date.
Speaking on the panel “The CSDs’ and CSD participants’ readiness for T+1”, Paolo Carabelli, Senior Manager, Product Development at Euronext Securities Milan, focused on the importance of preparation and coordination between CSDs and their participants. “No one can achieve T+1 on their own. It is a cooperative challenge.”
As the settlement window becomes shorter, there will be less time to identify and resolve exceptions. This makes automation an increasingly important part of the transition. As Paolo Carabelli explained, moving faster means reducing manual intervention and avoiding interruptions in the processing chain.
“Preparation is about introducing automation into internal systems to fully streamline the whole processing chain,” he said. “To be faster, you have to remove manual intervention and avoid exceptions, which implies interruption, and thus delays.”
The need for coordination extends across the full settlement process. Information has to move quickly from one part of the chain to the next, from trade execution through to settlement. This means that CSDs and their participants need to understand how their respective processes connect and where dependencies may arise.
For CSDs, preparation is also about making sure participants have the information, tools and testing environments they need. Euronext is progressing with its own testing programme and working closely with clients and stakeholders ahead of client testing in 2027.
The importance of corporate action data
The discussions at PostTrade 360° also highlighted another challenge that will become increasingly important as settlement times shorten: the quality and flow of corporate action data.
Thomas Métier, Programme Executive, T+1 Settlement Migration at Euronext, moderated the panel “Corporate actions: mapping the road to golden operational records”. The discussion looked at the challenges involved in creating a reliable “golden record” for corporate actions, allowing the same information to be used consistently throughout the value chain.
One figure from the discussion illustrated the scale of the challenge. While issuers may report 94% straight-through processing on their side, this can fall to just 18% by the time a proxy vote reaches the shareholder.
The issue is not simply about technology. Corporate action information passes through a number of different actors and systems, creating opportunities for information to be interpreted, changed or manually processed along the way. The panel therefore explored questions around who owns the data, who is responsible for validating it and where accountability should sit.
These questions become even more important with T+1. With less time available to resolve issues manually, information needs to be accurate, structured and available to market participants as early as possible.
Preparing together
The conversations in Stockholm reinforced a central principle of Euronext’s T+1 programme: the transition is an ecosystem-wide effort.
Euronext is on track to be operationally and technically ready for the October 2027 go-live and is working with clients, regulators, authorities and industry partners to support the transition. With testing already underway within Euronext and client testing planned for 2027, the focus is now on making sure market participants have the time and information they need to prepare.
The move to T+1 is ultimately about more than settling trades one day faster. It is an opportunity to make processes more efficient and reduce reliance on manual intervention across the post-trade chain. As the industry moves closer to October 2027, preparation and cooperation will be key to making that transition work.