Citi Securities Services Evolution 2025

16 | Securities Services Evolution 2025 Where is the asset servicing challenge? “The majority of challenges we face in post-trade operations are because of corporate actions. Especially because event creativity makes it very hard for us to standardize.” Carlos Albuquerque, Managing Director, Head of CSD, B3 No report on post trade would be complete without a look at asset servicing, which has increased in significance over our last 3 whitepapers. 12% of this year’s survey respondents identified asset servicing automation as today’s most impactful change in post-trade, up from6% in 2023 (Figure 1). Problems in automation of corporate actions and proxy voting are not new – but they are clearly becoming more urgent and consuming more management time. As our recent report “Asset Servicing: a new dialogue to connect issuers to investors” highlights, automation levels have declined in recent years due to growing levels of innovation in event creation, increases in bespoke processes and greater operational oversight . In 2025, new market developments have further increased pressures on asset servicing teams around the world. T+1 has created an unexpected drain on corporate action teams, with global investors struggling to manage trading entitlements, tax and static data on North American securities. FMIs across Latin America, in particular, have struggled to accelerate their (largely manual) asset servicing processes to keep step with challenges that arise from their large volumes of dual-listed securities. In Europe, the implementation of the ECB’s SCoRE 7 initiatives for their European Collateral Management System (ECMS) has added a third set of corporate action messaging standards in the European Union. Whilst event standardization has long been cited as the target model for corporate actions, this scenario highlights the cost and complexity that can ensue if not managed properly. Importantly, the true impacts of these problems are most acutely felt not by custodians and brokers, but by their clients – who receive multitudes of different event descriptions from each counterparty every day. As Figure 4 highlights, 64% of institutional investors consider asset servicing automation to be one of the top 3 post-trade changes to most impact their business, underlining the acute pressures felt by the buy-side to rationalize and make sense of the information they receive and manage every day. Figure 4: The asset servicing challenge Question: What do you consider to be the most significant changes in the post-trade space today – based on impact to your business? Please rank accordingly with 1 being the most impactful. Expressed as: % of respondents in each segment who selected automation of asset servicing as a top 3 change. Institutional Investor Making sense of one venue Making sense of multiple providers Asset manager Broker-dealer Bank 36% 40% 60% 64% CSD Custodian Asset manager Pension Fund