By Andrew Miller, Head of Origination, North America
During North America’s transition to T+1, US firms created multi-disciplinary task forces to address the challenges affecting the front office, risk, operations, settlement, and client experience across multiple markets. The business-focused task forces uncovered a reliance on 1) tech stacks comprising internal systems with siloed data, 2) delayed and unstructured counterparty comms, and 3) manual tasks to address resulting inefficiencies.
For example, firms found they had limited visibility of the status of their trades on a post-trade pre-settlement basis, which increased the risks of fails, driving up both dollar and opportunity costs.
Within securities finance, technology solutions such as Pirum’s Trade Risk Manager and Recalls Manager, helped give front- and middle-office participants the transparency and automation needed to optimize settlement rates.
As the first phase of T+1 went live in May 2024, the finish line became the starting line for the next race. Those who only added headcount in an effort to achieve a follow-the-sun model found ongoing costs and a technological burden still requiring investment.
Fast forward to today. The challenge for North America’s securities lending businesses in 2026 is to build a unified view of the entire trade lifecycle – from initial bid through to settlement – because the trading desks with the best data and visibility will be best positioned to pull ahead.
The reasons for this focus on complete lifecycle solutions boil down to two primary drivers. Firstly, a unified pre- and post-trade stack delivers competitive advantages in terms of accuracy, velocity, and scalability that can power growth. Secondly, the potential of AI-enabled operations, combined with the breakneck pace of evolution of large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI, make connected front-to-back data imperative for anyone looking to differentiate their capabilities and build on the post-trade efficiencies that we now know to be critical to the business.
That's the driver for business owners and post-trade teams: to align around a single, clean, enterprise-wide data set – the necessary foundation for AI-enabled operations, and therefore a prerequisite for remaining competitive.
As my colleague Carmine outlined recently, clients are no longer asking “why?”, they’re asking “how fast can you get me live” on Pirum TradeConnect. The interoperable, scalable, and global solution directly addresses both trading and operational excellence
The platform automates pre-trade processes for any country, region, or asset class, providing standardized connectivity to the market through a single integration. Whether connecting bilaterally or via trading venues, firms gain control over who they connect with, when, and how – all the while also connecting seamlessly with their post-trade operations.
By connecting pre-trade execution decisions directly to post-trade outcomes, Pirum TradeConnect uniquely removes friction at the source. The result: with the right set up, clients can today achieve bid to settlement in under 30 minutes.
Pirum TradeConnect delivers to clients like Citi the most important technological ingredients of success in today’s securities finance: real-time and clean data sets, and up to 99.9% STP automation that supports follow-the-sun operations.
When the business case is clear, cost often becomes the deciding factor. That’s why Pirum TradeConnect’s transparent, flat-fee pricing model offers reassurance amid today’s volatile and uncertain business environment. The cost-effective approach removes the uncertainty of volume-based pricing and eliminates the need for extensive internal development resources.
Turning to Europe, the European T+1 transition in October 2027 presents far greater complexity than the US transition. This is where TradeConnect's architecture adds true value: as a scalable and global solution, it handles multiple exchanges, currencies, and CSDs through a single unified platform. The solution scales with business needs regardless of geographic or asset class complexity.
Global and local firms that are implementing Pirum TradeConnect now – 18 months ahead of the European T+1 deadline – gain comfortable implementation timelines, proven technology, and the operational confidence that comes from working with a platform already battle-tested in live T+1 environments.
Meanwhile, for US firms the upside is clear: connected lifecycles, rapid settlement, cost transparency, and global scalability delivered through a single platform is a differentiating advantage.
If you want to learn more how Pirum TradeConnect can support your business, get in touch with Andrew.