This session was sponsored by Deutsche Bank, DTCC, ERI, and S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“There is a demonstrable history in Europe of not making progress unless there is an imperative from the regulator”, said Andrew Douglas, Managing Director and Head of Government Relations EMEA and APAC at DTCC. The US central securities depository is leading the way for the quick T+1 implementation going on there. Market participants themselves will rarely come together with enough force, partly because they prefer postponing new investments until their existing platforms get old. Possibly, some phased approach could be a way, starting with some asset classes.
Douglas was on the panel together with Erik Veerman, Senior Adviser Market Infrastructures at ABN AMRO; Kamala Kannan, Director, Product Management at S&P Global Market Intelligence; Richard Ozinga, Head of Product Management EMEA at Deutsche Bank; and, as moderator, Alan Goodrich, Regional Sales Manager – Benelux, Nordics, Baltics and SEE at ERI Bancaire.
The audience was polled about the probability of the T+1 cycle being live as standard in Europe five years from now. This was the pre-session response, with 29 delegates voting. Over half the voters saw the five-year vision as medium-probable or above – an expectation level that the panel seemed to view as notably exaggerated (a post-session re-take indicated that expectations had been lowered somewhat over the half hour).
Alan Goodrich referred to the idea that if we had started from a blank sheet, we would never have built today’s structure. The trouble is, that the sheet just is not blank.
Richard Ozinga proposed seeking process improvements first, then shortening the settlement when ready – rather than cutting the settlement time and discovering process issues the hard way: “We have to deep dive into the real problems and solutions.”
Read the original article here.
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