The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and Deloitte have today published a new report entitled: ‘Improving the Settlement Efficiency Landscape in Europe’. The report analyses the causes of settlement fails in the EU securities market and gives recommendations to improve the efficiency of post trade processes. In Europe there is a clear lack of high-quality, granular, public data on settlement fail rates and reasons, which has proved a barrier to assessing the current environment. This report therefore uses different data sources to track inefficiencies across the post-trade lifecycle. AFME has developed a set of recommendations to enable and promote increased settlement efficiency, to improve the current operating environment and help prepare the ground for any potential future transition to a shorter T+1 settlement cycle.

AFME recommendations:

• Reduce exceptions
• Expedite exception resolution
• Optimise settlement of available inventory