By Payal Lakhani, Senior Business Solutions Manager, CoacsConnect

How much has corporate action processing in securities lending actually evolved? For many firms, the honest answer is: not enough. The manual workflows that most firms still rely on were designed for a settlement environment that has shifted underneath them.

In March 2026, the Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo) published its T+1 Corporate Events Harmonised Implementation Guide. For anyone still treating corporate actions automation as a future priority, this document changes the terms of the conversation.

This is not a recommendation paper or a best practice guide. It is the regulatory community's formal specification of how corporate action events – mandatory distributions, mandatory reorganisations, voluntary events, claims, transformations, and buyer protections – must be processed in a T+1 settlement environment. ESMA's November 2024 report had already identified the need to standardise and automate corporate events processing as a prerequisite for the transition. The AMI-SeCo guide is the delivery of that mandate.

What the guide actually requires

The operational implications are precise. Under T+1, the sequencing of corporate action key dates compresses materially. Record dates, ex-dates, payment dates, and election deadlines for voluntary events are all calculated against a shorter settlement cycle, meaning the window for identifying, processing, and instructing on corporate action events shrinks across the board.

The result: firms must react faster, with those that can turn around voluntary events more efficiently able to offer more competitive deadlines to clients and counterparties. The firms that move fastest will set the pace their peers are forced to match. Efficiency is now a competitive line, not just an operational one.

For securities lending operations, claims – the process by which income and entitlements are reallocated when a corporate action falls on an open loan – must be processed at least once per hour during daytime hours (Chapter 4, p.12). That requires real-time position data. In T+2, that overnight was a safety net. T+1 removes it.

Transformations are equally unforgiving. When a corporate action changes the nature of securities subject to a pending settlement transaction – a merger, a redemption, a conversion – any securities lending transaction still pending at the record date must be cancelled and replaced with new instructions reflecting the terms of the reorganisation (Chapter 5, TF1). The CSD manages that cancellation and replacement, but only against accurate, matched, timely instructions from the parties. In T+2, there was a day's buffer to resolve discrepancies. The AMI-SeCo guide removes that buffer. Unmatched or late instructions become failed settlements, with the CSDR penalty clock running from day one.

Where the industry stands

At Pirum's Industry-led T+1 webinars series, Andy Dyson, former CEO of ISLA, described the effect the approaching deadline is already having on how firms operate:

"What's happening is that the laser-driven T+1 requirement is forcing people to do a couple of things – address things they've been quite happy to ignore for many years, but also enhance the way they work together."

It's a candid framing, and in my experience working with clients across this space, it rings true. The equity corporate actions space has moved further along the automation curve. Fixed income and bond lending has been slower – as Robert Keane's recent analysis of Pirum's Recalls Manager data shows. That gap becomes increasingly difficult to justify as settlement cycles compress. The AMI-SeCo guide sets no asset class exemptions: its requirements apply to any transaction settling in a CSD, equity or fixed income alike.

Platform development and the T+1 timeline

Pirum's CoacsConnect platform processes corporate actions through automated workflows for both Income Claims and Voluntary Corporate Actions – live functionality now adopted by 42 clients across global markets.

The firms that are ahead of the October 2027 deadline are already operating in the environment the AMI-SeCo guide describes. They're not waiting for final regulatory text – they're building the data infrastructure, the bilateral connectivity, and the operational discipline now, because that's what the compressed timeline demands.

The map is drawn. Are you moving in the right direction?

To discuss how CoacsConnect can support your corporate actions operations ahead of T+1, get in touch.

Also included in the Quarterly Panorama:

  • Ben Challice on how Pirum's AI virtuous cycle has moved from thesis to working proof point in a single quarter, with a new AI-enabled settlement solution surfacing counterparty and collateral signals at the point of trade.
  • Zoe Balkwell on why T+1 readiness is only as strong as your least-prepared counterparty, and what the EU T+1 Industry Committee data tells us about where the friction sits.

The Panorama also includes a regulatory and events calendar and a product news section.