Under EU T+1, the entire post-trade window — allocation, confirmation, FX funding, collateral mobilisation, exception handling — compresses to five hours. For most European firms still running on legacy, batch-driven infrastructure, that is not tight. It is structurally impossible.
The challenge is not working faster. It is working differently. And Europe faces a harder version of this transition than any market before it: fragmented CSDs, multi-currency flows, complex cross-border legal frameworks and operating models that were never designed for same-day processing.
Euroclear data shows that 71% of EU settlement failures today are already caused by counterparty shorts, before T+1 even kicks in. Add tighter recall windows, reduced time for exception handling and near-zero tolerance for late matching, and the picture gets significantly worse unless firms act now.
What you will find in this insight
Cognizant and Microsoft have published the first in a series of four insights on EU T+1 settlement modernisation. It covers the structural weaknesses of European post-trade infrastructure, the impact on each participant type: from asset managers and brokers to custodians and FMIs and a framework for building an event-driven operating model that is ready for what comes next.
