Operations / Post-Trade

Post-Trade Efficiency on Distributed Ledgers

T+0 settlement means a trade settles on the day it is executed. The US moved to T+1 in 2024 and the EU, UK and Switzerland follow in October 2027. Shared ledgers are where same-day and atomic settlement are being tested.

Summary

T+0 settlement means a securities trade settles on the same business day it is executed, either in one batch at the end of the day or trade by trade. It comes after T+1, which the US adopted in May 2024 and the EU, UK and Switzerland adopt on 11 October 2027. Going to T+0 changes how much cash and inventory firms need to hold, and when they need it.

How it works

The SEC adopted T+1 for US broker-dealer transactions on 15 February 2023, with a compliance date of 28 May 2024, as one response to the 2021 meme stock events. Europe followed. The EU moves from T+2 to T+1 on 11 October 2027, the UK moves on the same day under a statutory instrument published in draft in November 2025, and Swiss domestic markets are set to move that October as well.

Every day removed from the cycle shortens the time a counterparty can fail before settlement, and with it the exposure that brokers and clearing houses have to cover. T+0 removes the overnight exposure completely. It comes in two forms. End-of-day T+0 keeps netting and settles once after the close. Atomic settlement settles each trade the moment it executes, with securities and cash exchanged in one step.

The cost is netting. In US equities, netting cuts the cash that actually has to change hands by about 98%, according to SIFMA (June 2026). Atomic settlement gives that up, because it needs cash and securities fully prefunded for every trade. SIFMA argues that settlement models which sharply raise intraday funding needs would make liquidity more expensive to provide. In its view atomic settlement suits specific workflows, such as lower-volume products or smaller groups of participants, better than a whole equity market.

Shared ledgers are where same-day and atomic settlement are running today. HSBC Orion settled the Hong Kong government's HKD6 billion-equivalent multi-currency digital green bond on T+1 in February 2024. Conventional bond issuance in Hong Kong settles T+5. Broadridge's Distributed Ledger Repo moves tokenized securities and cash together in one atomic transaction and supports intraday repo. It averaged $351 billion a day in August 2026.

Those examples point to where T+0 pays off first. Repo, collateral moves and primary issuance have lower trade counts and fewer participants, and a lot of the cost there is in the settlement window itself, so settling trade by trade gains the most. High-volume secondary equity trading gains least, because it gives up the most netting. Expect a mixed market, with T+1 for the bulk of cash equities and atomic or same-day settlement for financing and issuance where both legs are on-chain.

The operational work overlaps. Moving to T+1 in October 2027 forces allocation, confirmation and affirmation onto trade date, and T+0 needs the same process discipline. The difference is funding. A T+1 firm can still source cash and securities overnight, but a T+0 firm has to have them in place when the trade executes. Tokenized cash and intraday repo exist to fill that gap.

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Impact

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