Citi Securities Services Evolution 2025

10 | Securities Services Evolution 2025 What is driving the FMI agenda today? “Digital assets, resilience and T+1 have all increased the costs and risks of being a CSD today.” Bernard Frenay, Chief Executive Officer, European Markets, Euroclear Priorities don’t change every year in post-trade – and the central themes faced by the world’s FMIs have remained broadly consistent over the five years of this report. However, the manifestation of these pressures is constantly evolving and, in 2025, FMIs face a host of new challenges (in nature and magnitude) that are creating significant strains on industry resources today. Resilience is non-negotiable . . . but what is it? “A key priority today has to be avoiding a breach or an outage in all of our services to our participants. Resilience means that we have to be ready to begin at 9am every day and be prepared to resolve any contingency.” Claudio Garin, Chief Commercial Officer, DCV In our interviews this year, every infrastructure has cited resilience as being at the forefront of their operating agendas. It is sacrosanct and non-negotiable. Yet the pressures and definitions of resilience continue to evolve, changing the way that FMIs manage their daily operations. This year has highlighted the interdependence of FMIs as they perform their daily functions – reliant on infrastructure such as TARGET2-Securities (T2S) in Europe, software providers, local payment platforms and others. Faced with a growing interdependence in their ability to provide continuing market operations, FMIs are cooperating more than ever to run resilience preparations and BCP planning that span silos across FMIs, central banks and global infrastructure providers. As new resilience-focused regulations continue to emerge (notably including the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) in the European Union, Prudential Standard CPS230 Operational Risk Management 2 in Australia and others), expectations of FMIs have risen consistently, fueling debate around exactly what levels of performance should realistically be expected. As many FMIs underline, perfect performance is impossible, and the cost of fully resilient, dual processes is significant. Where and how FMIs should be expected to set their thresholds for delivery is an increasing question. “There is no perfect resilience readiness without an increase in complexity. The challenge the industry faces today is in defining and understanding what resilience means in practice and putting in place the best technology and processes to manage risk”. Clive Triance, Group Executive, Securities & Payments, Australian Stock Exchange Resilience is also about more than technical performance. In a geopolitical environment where sanctions management forms an increasing part of post-trade workloads, the ability of investors to have ongoing access to their securities and cash is a central theme for many FMIs. As FMIs continue transitioning their platforms to accelerate settlements, onboard millions of (retail) clients and offer new assets, we anticipate that the discussions around resilience will only increase in the next five years. “Investors around the world need to know that their assets are safe and accessible whenever they need them. We have to be able to ensure that resilience.” James Fok, Chief Commercial Officer, CMUOmniClear