Citi Securities Services Evolution 2025

Securities Services Evolution 2025 | 11 Growth and Expansion: offering consolidated access “Neobrokers and B2B2C clients are becoming increasingly relevant in the financial system globally. They have different and far-reaching requirements – looking to be able to use crypto assets, e-money tokens next to fiat, wanting to give their clients the ability to trade 24/7/365 and leverage intraday listings. And they are increasingly turning to us, recognizing financial market infrastructures like Clearstream as the ideal backbone for such frameworks.” Jens Hachmeister, Head of Issuer Services & New Digital Markets, ClearstreamHolding AG Our 2024 whitepaper highlighted the growing importance of retail investors around the world, withmillions of new accounts being opened in markets such as Brazil and India in recent years. In 2025, this trend has continued but with a new manifestation, namely the advent of neobrokers. “Our clients are looking for real-time collateral, and longer trading hours are increasingly a topic of discussion – with demand from the global retail investor community the key to any decision to extending European trading hours further.” Tim Beckwith, Head of Commercial & Business Development, Cboe Clear Europe High-tech, zero-legacy providers like Trade Republic and Robinhood are revolutionizing retail investment (in leadingmarkets such as the US andGermany, for example) imposing newdemands on FMIs. These platforms seek round-the-clock, low-cost access to both traditional and digital assets across global markets – challenging traditional FMIs which are accustomed to dealingwith institutional banks and brokers on an overnight basis. The nature of these real-time requirements is potentially transformational – turbocharging expectations for operatingmodels that are able to offer consolidated access to all types of securities (spanning traditional and digital assets) and to all types of market. In order to satisfy these demands, FMIs need to leverage and expand their reach, in order to deliver capital- and cost-efficient gateways to regional markets. Beyond retail, the theme of consolidated access also extends to fixed income –wheremany FMIs have continued to expand their capabilities in 2025. Hong Kong’s HKMA launched its newOmniclear CSD 3 in September 2024 (with the stated aimof providing global mobility and access for Asian debt), and B3 in Brazil is now seeingmore turnover from fixed income than they do fromequities. Meanwhile other FMIs are starting to offer services to other regional peers (as DCV is doing in Latin America) in an effort to drive new scale in propositions around proxy voting and securities lending. Creating competition – interoperability and consolidation The changing face of FMI competition is accentuating these pressures to serve new customers better in 2025. In Europe, Euronext’s plans to use Europe’s T2S to offer settlements on multiple European markets all via a single CSD (in Milan) has dominated industry discussion in 2025. Whilst operational issues ostensibly remain, the beginning of choice in European settlement venues could be on the horizon (through the investor CSD model), allowing investors to settle any European security in one of a host of European CSDs, ideally of their choosing. Whether this development leads to reduced market complexity or to a new wave of consolidation in Europe remains to be seen. Beyond Europe, Brazil’s regulators are evaluating greater competition in the post-trade space, and ASX’s post-trade dominance in Australia continues to be challenged. While Cboe Australia competes at the trading level, regulators like ASIC 4 are now actively pushing for greater post-trade competition. Competition is not only coming fromwithin the traditional FMI community. Crypto-native exchanges, such as Coinbase are now expanding their propositions in order to redefine institutional service expectations. Their ‘prime brokerage’ model consolidates trading, custody, and financing into a single offering, which traditional providers are racing to replicate. Critically, Coinbase’s proactive regulatory compliance, demonstrated by MiCA Qualified Custodian licenses, builds institutional confidence and directly challenges the long-held dominance of established custodians. The existing post-trade order is definitely evolving. “As the Investor CSD model grows, interoperability is going to be absolutely key. Choice is alive and happening – and we have to promote competition. We can’t have more fragmentation.” Tim Beckwith, Head of Commercial & Business Development, Cboe Clear Europe