T+1 in Europe – readiness, risks and the race for efficiency

From US equities’ recent leap to T+1 to Europe’s own pending shift, the race to shorten settlement cycles is reshaping post-trade. At Sibos 2025, moderator Jenny Baisch (SWIFT) brought together Karen An Birkel, Sachin Mohindra, Tobias Pass, and Sonia Paston-Bedingfeld to explore whether faster truly means better and what it takes to keep efficiency from slipping in the process.

Birkel, head of division at the European Central Bank, emphasised the broader opportunity: “This is a great occasion for the industry and the regulator to work together and really improve the processes, increase transparency, and reduce risks.”

Collaboration is crucial

The challenge goes beyond readiness, it requires rethinking how workflows are designed, argues Mohindra, executive director at Goldman Sachs. He pointed to the potential of persisting a “golden record” and enriching it with centralised data stores as a way to fundamentally change processes. Collaboration will be crucial, he added, but it may not be enough on its own. 

“I think we might need to be a bit stronger and lean on regulation to help innovate the market a little bit more. What about mandating the use of electronic storage and communication of SSIs? What about mandating the use of partial settlement? I think we need to be a little bit more forthcoming and a bit more direct in the way we approach things here in Europe”, says Mohindra.

Don’t forget people

Tobias Pass, head of settlement at Berenberg, highlighted the pressure on operations: “T+1 will compress the available time to do the post-trade check by roughly 83 percent. This drastically raises the risk of missing the overnight settlement cycles or even missing the settlement date.” Automation, he said, is vital, but so are people: “Automation is important, but don’t forget the people. They are the ones that solve your problems at the end of the day.”

As Baisch wrapped up, the key themes were clear: transparency, automation, collaboration and urgency. “Not only keeping the level of settlement efficiency that we have today, but hopefully even improving this in shorter settlement cycles,” she concluded.

Sibos 2025 plays out in Frankfurt from 29 September to 2 October, with about 12,000 registered delegates. We are there, overview our coverage here.