Euroclear UK & International has extended the daily cut-off time for the submission of settlement instructions from 20:00 to 21:00 (UK time), reports The Trade. The change adheres to recommendation SETT 02 in the implementation plan published by UK’s Accelerated Settlement Taskforce (AST), which proposed that firms be given more time to input settlement instructions on the trade date itself instead of the following day.
The extension will give brokers, custodians, and other intermediaries more time submit and match transactions. The aim is to reduce settlement fails, offer better flexibility to firms that are operating across multiple time zones, and support early transaction matching.
Finance Feeds notes in an article about the change that Euroclear UK & International already settles gilt transactions on T+1. The firm is in the process of upgrading the Certificateless Registry for Electronic Share Transfer (CREST), UK’s settlement platform, so that it can also handle equities on T+1. “The change in cutoff hours, then, is less a standalone adjustment than an early milestone on the road to full T+1,” claims the publication. It describes T+1 as “more than a systems upgrade” and a “re-engineering of workflow”.
