The EU T+1 Industry Committee has published a clarification regarding the EU approach to Standing Settlement Instructions (SSI) templates

The key elements of the clarification are that:

There is a common European standard: The Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) taxonomies and templates for sharing SSIs are deemed compatible with the EEA’s pre-settlement storage and exchange requirements—consistent with the UK Accelerated Settlement Taskforce (AST) recommendation.

Additional European Economic Area (EEA) field-level guidance (when implementing the FMSB templates):

• BIC: Mandatory without exception as the instructing-party identifier.
• PSET: A mandatory field in the EEA, in line with Securities Markets Practice Group (SMPG) standards.
• SAFE / PSAF: An optional field.
• MIC and ISIN: Optional at the pre-settlement exchange/storage level and to be agreed bilaterally — distinct from downstream at the CSD, where ISIN is mandatory for matching (MIC is not).
• Classification identifier: Needed only if a party wants to split by instrument type, using the highest-level CFI (Classification of Financial Instrument) code, for example “EXXXXX” for all equities (where E represents the instrument type), and “XXXXXX” where no split is required (i.e., not instrument relevant)
• Registration: An optional field, applicable only where required by local rules/regulation or specific business needs.

Andrew Douglas, Chair of the UK AST, welcomed this clarification commenting that, ‘This is further evidence of the excellent co-operation between the UK and EU taskforces confirming additional standardisation between both jurisdictions and further enhancing the efficiency of cross-border European securities processing.’

Giovanni Sabatini, Independent Chair of the EU T+1 Committee confirmed, ‘This clarification provides further clarity on standards for the storage and exchange of Standing Settlement Instructions (SSIs) between trading parties and their intermediaries and dispels any concerns of misalignment between the UK and EU on “pre-settlement” SSI standards.’

Background

The clarification confirms that the FMSB templates are compatible with the EEA’s requirements, reflecting the fact that additional elements are needed to address EU-specific considerations. It also resolves an earlier source of confusion in the market, where the question of SSI storage and exchange had at times been conflated with that of location confirmation; the new guidance confirms that its scope is limited to SSIs alone.

The link to the document is here