Brian Steele is Managing Director, President, Clearing & Securities Services, DTCC.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2024?
DTCC has played a unique and critical role in the industry for over 50 years. In 2024, the industry again looked to us to lead some of the most sweeping changes to market structure in history, including the successful implementation of T+1 in North America, preparing the industry for expanded US Treasury clearing and advancing the digitization of financial markets. These initiatives required us to work collaboratively with market participants, industry organizations and key stakeholders, while advancing our efforts to modernize our platforms to improve the client experience and strengthen resiliency.
What was the highlight of 2024?
While there were many achievements in 2024, the U.S. transition to T+1 stands out given its scope and impact. It required market participants to collaborate and execute this historic change. For several years, we worked closely with the industry to identify and resolve issues, educate firms, increase automation, and test readiness to ensure a safe and successful transition. As part of this, we heavily focused on improving industry affirmation rates through automation to solve a long-standing industry challenge. Since implementation, the industry is affirming nearly 95% of transactions by the 9 p.m. DTC cutoff, which represents a significant improvement over pre-T+1 rates. In addition, accelerating settlement delivered significant capital and liquidity benefits enabling us to provide $3 billion dollars in clearing fund savings back to the industry, all without increasing fails. With this success, we are now seeing the United Kingdom, Europe and countries in Asia begin work on aligning their settlement cycles. We look forward to sharing our learnings and expertise to support their journeys.
What are your expectations for 2025?
While the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment remain highly uncertain, we are very focused on delivering on our strategic priorities – most notably, the expansion of U.S. Treasury clearing. With deadlines quickly approaching for customer margin segregation in March 2025, followed by cash clearing in December 2025 and repo clearing in June 2026, we continue to work closely with our clients to address the impacts of the rule and how they need to prepare for the transition. We’re leading industry efforts in a number of areas, including initiatives to support done away transactions via our Sponsored Service and recently SEC-approved Agent Clearing Service access models, as well as identifying ways to solve accounting treatment challenges. At the same time, DTCC is pursuing opportunities to drive additional capital and liquidity efficiencies via cross-margining arrangements, the creation of default funds and other innovative approaches. We’ll continue to partner closely with our clients and the industry to ensure smooth implementations.
