Trading and Settlement
Effective trading and settlement is essential to the operations of our industry and supporting transactions for our clients, therefore PIMFA works with infrastructure and industry counterparts to ensure that member firms can benefit from the most efficient and cost-effective trading and settlement environment.
Here you can find information on our previous industry engagement and member support for:
Following a request from the FCA in February 2016, eight of the leading investment and pension trade associations joined forces to establish the Transfers and Re-registration Industry Group (TRIG). TRIG’s objectives are to explore ways of improving the process of transferring pension and investment assets and drive forward best practices in this area. Following a review process, that enabled the group to better understand the scale and complexity of the challenge which covers 549 different processes, a consultation paper containing five proposals was published on 5th December 2016, which you can read here.
- Central Securities Depositories (CSDs)
On 10th March 2017 the CSD Regulation was published in the European Union’s Official Journal, entering into force on 30th March 2017. This marks the start of the application period during which EU Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) must seek authorisation from their local Competent Authority. At the end of that process – expected to last 12 months – most of the CSD Regulation will take effect in the UK.
In December 2022, the UK Government launched an Accelerated Settlement Taskforce (T+1) to explore the potential for faster settlement of financial trades in the UK. Transaction date + 1 means the settlement date of a trade is one business day after the trade execution date. For example, if a trade is executed on a Tuesday, settlement, when the buyer receives the securities, and the seller receives the proceeds, should occur on Wednesday.
In recent years, PIMFA has been involved in a number of financial services industry-wide dormant asset initiatives.
The original Dormant Assets Scheme (DAS), defined in the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act 2008, identified bank accounts as dormant when they had been untouched for at least 15 years, and where the bank or building society had been unable to trace the owner. The Banks and Building Societies could then voluntarily channel the funds from those dormant accounts to the Reclaim Fund, The Reclaim Fund (RFL) is owned by HM Treasury, and authorised and regulated by the FCA. The RFL enables dormant account monies to be used to help social and environmental initiatives across the UK.