A lot has happened in 2025 — how is this impacting your business?
Miguel Ferreira: 2025 was another year marked by uncertainty and volatility across financial markets and that continues to shape our priorities. As a financial market infrastructure, our core mission remains ensuring stability, security, and resilience for the ecosystem we serve.
At the same time, we are committed to supporting the development of capital markets globally. We doubled down on our customer-centric approach to ensure we not only address current needs but anticipate future ones — delivering products and services that combine innovation with industry-leading client experiences.
To navigate volatility effectively, we have adopted more dynamic and flexible working practices, optimising resource allocation to focus where we can create the greatest impact. This adaptability is key to maintaining trust and delivering value in an environment that demands both resilience and agility.
Marije Verhelst: We are, without a doubt, operating against a volatile market backdrop. Markets have been affected by several developments — including the introduction of US trade tariffs, ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the credit downgrade of France, and rising concerns regarding the credit risk exposures at various US regional banks. Additionally, the shift in central bank policy away from quantitative easing towards quantitative tightening is still exerting influence on market dynamics. Furthermore, regulatory capital requirements set out under Basel III are intensifying these trends. As a result, the past 12 months have been particularly active for Euroclear’s Collateral Highway. In 2025, triparty outstandings grew by 10 per cent year-on-year.
Can you tell us about your current strategic priorities for the Collateral Highway?
Ferreira: When we launched the Collateral Highway over a decade ago, it was truly revolutionary — and it has continued to evolve in both capability and scale ever since. In 2025, we were proud to reach a major milestone: mobilising €2 trillion of collateral daily.
Looking ahead, our strategic priority is clear: to keep expanding the Collateral Highway with innovation at its core. That means enhancing connectivity, improving efficiency, and introducing new solutions that empower clients to optimise collateral across borders and asset classes. We see the Highway not just as infrastructure, but as a dynamic platform that will continue to shape the future of collateral management.
Verhelst: Euroclear’s Collateral Highway remains a cornerstone of our strategic agenda, and accordingly, the Group is making substantial and sustained investments in its continued development — a commitment that is set to endure.
This ongoing multi-year investment programme is designed to advance three key objectives: delivering an outstanding client experience; establishing the market standard for excellence in collateral allocation and optimisation; and equipping our clients with best-in-class data analytics and digital solutions. These tools will empower customers to unlock new revenue streams and make more informed decisions, all in real time.
Can you explore how some of your initiatives in 2025 tally with these three objectives?
Verhelst: In partnership with Transcend, a fintech innovator, we launched Euroclear Collateral Optimisation Services (ECOS). By combining our robust collateral management infrastructure with Transcend’s sophisticated optimisation technology, ECOS offers clients a comprehensive collateral optimisation solution. This enables enhanced liquidity management and cost efficiencies — particularly crucial as institutions face unprecedented demand for high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) and mounting funding costs.
We have also enhanced our client communications by adopting Taskize, the foremost operational collaboration platform. Further integrations with email and Symphony messaging are scheduled for the first quarter of this year. Thanks to this partnership, client queries can now be addressed and resolved significantly more swiftly.
Entering a new year, what is on the horizon for 2026?
Ferreira: 2026 will be a pivotal year — one where clients truly experience a transformation in how they interact with us. Building on the strong foundations laid in 2025, our multiyear investment programme is now gaining real momentum and the ambitious vision we set out is becoming tangible.
Verhelst: To begin with, we are set to significantly simplify and streamline our legal documentation. This means reducing the number of documents required and ensuring they are clearer and written in concise, plain English. We will move away from static, PDF-style forms in favour of automated electronic forms that can be completed online.
ECOS is also due to receive substantial upgrades, with the introduction of additional optimisation criteria. These enhancements will be further strengthened by the integration of client data, the implementation of new industry standards for collateral optimisation and the addition of tools to better simulate and optimise inventories across trading venues and custodians.
Furthermore, Self Select — the service that enables clients to directly manage their collateral allocations — will soon be accessible through EasyWay, our web-based platform. This will allow users to allocate specific securities to particular trades with ease.
AutoSelect is set for an upgrade as well, with improvements to its optimisation features. We anticipate that these enhancements could help reduce fails by as much as 25 per cent, leading to lower credit usage for collateral givers.
Euroclear is further strengthening its collateral data strategy by ensuring that all categories of collateral data are accessible through a range of flexible channels. The introduction of new, data-driven services is underway, beginning with a Collateral Reference Data platform designed to provide seamless and scalable access to securities information. In addition, a fully automated external pricing service is set to streamline client onboarding, enabling users to connect their preferred pricing sources directly to their collateral schedules with ease.
The UK will remain a central focus throughout 2026, with triparty continuing as a cornerstone of Euroclear’s Crest modernisation initiative. Planned enhancements to Delivery by Value (DBV) are expected to enable users to fully leverage the Bank of England’s short-term repo facilities, maximising efficiency and flexibility in collateral management.
Looking beyond 2026, what about other upcoming enhancements coming up?
Verhelst: First and foremost, one of our principal strategic objectives is the launch of a cutting-edge digital collateral client onboarding and contract management platform. This new platform will enable clients to sign legal agreements and various forms electronically, while also digitising the drafting, negotiation and implementation of collateral schedules. Such enhancements will streamline the client journey, making engagements more efficient, intuitive, and transparent.
We are also progressing with the expansion of our modernised Collateral Reference Data Services, providing clients with flexible access to Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Reference Data utilised by the Euroclear Collateral Highway. This includes adaptable data access and contemporary connectivity options via APIs, while Managed File Transfer delivery will be upgraded to a new, flexible infrastructure, capable of handling intraday requests. These improvements are specifically intended to grant clients versatile access to accommodate their individual data requirements.
Regarding our existing services, we are enhancing AutoSelect to offer greater flexibility. Users will have more tools to organise Autoselect throughout the day in a way that best suits their operational needs.
T+1 is just around the corner in Europe. How are you supporting clients with the transition?
Ferreira: We have been fully committed to the T+1 transition from the very beginning because we see market harmonisation as a cornerstone of open and efficient markets. To ensure a smooth shift, we have dedicated resources across all levels — technology, operations, and client engagement — so that the transition on 11 October 2027 is as seamless and uneventful as previous settlement cycle transitions.
Verhelst: The EU, the UK, and Switzerland are set to implement T+1 settlement simultaneously on 11 October 2027, leaving affected financial institutions with just two years to prepare. There remains considerable work for the industry to complete ahead of this deadline and our primary objective is to ensure a seamless transition.
We are working closely with various industry associations and taskforces and we are making substantial investments in our settlement and collateral services.These planned enhancements are all aimed at extending and streamlining the operational day, increasing the efficiency of settlement and triparty processes, and improving credit efficiency.
Euroclear is keen to expand its collateral eligibility — can you share what is happening?
Verhelst: We remain firmly dedicated to broadening the scope of eligible collateral. A prime illustration of this commitment was making Korean treasury bonds (KTBs) Euroclearable. Remarkably, in less than two years since South Korea achieved this status, 50 per cent of KTBs held at Euroclear are now actively utilised for collateral management. Furthermore, APAC securities currently represent 20 per cent of all sovereign bond collateral held at Euroclear. Our ongoing mission is to develop and deepen international markets.
Euroclear is also doubling down on digital assets. What exactly are you doing?
Ferreira: Euroclear has always embraced innovation — leveraging new ideas and technologies to develop markets both locally and globally. Digital assets are the latest chapter in that journey. We are actively exploring the opportunities they present, as well as the challenges their adoption will bring.
A great example is the launch of our Digital Native Notes, which use distributed ledger technology (DLT) for the primary issuance process while ensuring these instruments remain fully eligible for financing. While the industry’s ultimate direction is still evolving, one thing is certain: any solutions delivered within the Euroclear ecosystem will meet the highest standards of safety, security, and resilience.
Verhelst: The digital asset landscape is still to mature, yet the potential applications for tokenisation are remarkably promising. Tokenisation has the capacity to revolutionise collateral management by enabling counterparties to use tokens — digital representations of real-world assets — as collateral. One of the principal advantages lies in the enhanced liquidity and collateral availability that can be unlocked by bridging temporal gaps.
We are actively pursuing several initiatives centred around digital assets. Earlier this year, we unveiled Project Pythagore, a collaborative venture with the Banque de France, aimed at tokenising Negotiable European Commercial Paper (NEU CP). Should this initiative prove successful, it will mark a significant stride towards the modernisation of short-term debt markets through the adoption of DLT. The project is designed to deliver both operational and administrative efficiencies, while maintaining the highest standards of transparency and security for market participants.
In the UK, we are a proactive participant in the Digital Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Sandbox — a regulated, live environment overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England. This sandbox is evaluating how emerging technologies can support the issuance, trading, and settlement of digital securities.
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Peter Gargone
Image: Miguel Ferreira and Marije Verhelst 