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From two days to five hours: what that means for your operations

Europe's settlement window is collapsing to five hours. Discover how to build a resilient, AI-driven post-trade architecture that goes beyond patchwork fixes.

If your post-trade operations still rely on batch processing, manual handoffs, and siloed workflows, T+1 will expose every gap fast. With the settlement window shrinking to roughly five hours, there is no room for late matches, stale SSIs, or overnight fixes. Allocation, confirmation, FX funding, collateral mobilisation, and exception handling all compete for the same narrow window. 

A single delay can cascade into settlement failure. And Europe's landscape makes it harder. Multiple CSDs, CCPs, currencies, and both T2S and non-T2S routes create orchestration challenges that simple system upgrades cannot solve. Yet industry surveys show most firms are still in the analysis phase, while the clock keeps ticking. 

This four-part interactive series gives you a structured path through the shift: the 5-hour reality that defines the new baseline, the workstream friction hiding in your current operations, a modern target operating model built on event-driven processing and clear accountability, and the agentic AI frontier where intelligent agents handle exceptions in real time. 

Explore the series

71%


of 2024 settlement failures caused
by counterparty shorts
(Euroclear)

Our industry expertise

Cognizant is not just a systems integrator. We combine deep capital markets expertise with leadership in agentic AI to deliver transformation at scale.

Powering agentic AI in capital markets

Cognizant and Microsoft combine advanced AI frameworks with deep capital markets expertise to drive transformation across post-trade operations.  

Through strategic collaboration, we deliver scalable AI solutions that automate settlement workflows, orchestrate exception handling, and ensure operational resilience under EU T+1.

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Meet our Experts


Anshuman Choudhary

Senior Risk and Finance Transformation Advisor

Choudhary Anshuman headshot

Pramit Basu

Consulting Principal, BFS Consulting
Europe 

Pramit Basu headshot

Aniruddha Ranade

Consulting Manager, BFS Consulting
Europe

Aniruddha Ranade headshot

Sumit Srivastava

Consulting Principal

Srivastava Sumit headshot

Is your business prepared for the shift to T+1 settlement?

Cognizant can help you transform settlement compression into lasting operational advantage.