Securities services evolution 2025: report
How and where is our industry transforming in 2025? 5th edition tracking post-trade industry evolution.
In Partnership with
After years of groundwork, the post-trade industry looks set for a period of transformation in speed, cost and resilience on an international scale. This whitepaper explores how the settlement acceleration workload is at an historic high, and how both DLT and GenAI are delivering significant and practical benefits.
Platform transformation scale
Infrastructure
Expansion, competition and resilience are central to the FMI agenda — retail and ETF growth, T+1 and 24/7 operations are all increasing the pressure.
Platform change at this scale is unprecedented — and the pace is accelerating rather than stabilising.
Digital assets share
Digital Assets
Front office and operations are both driving change as firms reshape balance sheets and operating budgets together.
Firms that have not begun transition planning are already behind the curve.
GenAI becomes mainstream
Technology
From client onboarding to reconciliation, GenAI is enabling automation across the trade cycle — moving from experimentation towards embedded use.
The speed of adoption suggests GenAI will become a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator within two to three years. "
The Securities Services Evolution whitepaper series has been providing industry-led insights on the key themes that underpin our industry's development for the last five years. The latest edition explores the evolution of trends shaping the industry.
What does the cumulative T+1 workload look like today? Where is Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) actually transforming daily trading and based on what business benefits? And where is Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) starting to take hold as a core operating technology?
The research draws on insights from 537 leaders across the global buy and sell sides. It aims to give practical context on market developments, to act as a core for future post-trade plans.
The whitepaper, produced in collaboration with Citi, highlights:
40% of world's market cap undergoing platform transformation: expansion, competition, and resilience are top of the financial market infrastructure (FMI) agenda, with firms addressing retail and Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) growth, T+1 and 24/7 operations
76% are running T+1 projects: efforts are no longer limited to one region — all markets now require project resources
Tokenised securities and digital assets are expected to represent 10% of market turnover by 2030
86% of firms are running Gen AI pilots: automation from client onboarding to reconciliation is being enabled now
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