Asset Servicing Summit 2026

For 2026, we have introduced three streams:

Our ongoing agenda will be continually updated with the finer discussion detail as we progress towards November 18th with our final speakers, content detail updates and more welcome surprises. Join us. There's never been a better time to meet the industry and engage with the forum.

Asset Services stream

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8.30
Registration Opens
Morning refreshment and pastries

Meet the exhibitors including watching product demonstrations and begin networking with your peers from across Europe
8.50
Chair's Welcome
 

Carlos Almeida, Head Of Asset Servicing - Europe, Vanguard

9.00
Chair's Opening Keynote: The Asset Manager's View: The Forces Reshaping Asset Servicing,
 

This keynote will cover the following and more:

Why this matters to asset managers
The 30-year story of fee compression
Industry consequences of lower fees
Scale versus complexity
Why operating models must adapt
Why T+1 matters
Why corporate actions matter
Why data matters
Why AI matters now
What the future ecosystem looks like

Carlos Almeida, Head Of Asset Servicing - Europe, Vanguard

9.30 Retail at Scale: Can Corporate Actions and Shareholder Rights Infrastructure Keep Pace with D2C Growth?
 

The Unit Economics of Retail Corporate Actions: What it costs to process each election, vote and rights take-up at retail scale, and whether low-fee D2C models can sustain it.

The Digitisation Baseline Service and the Omnibus Dilemma: What it takes to pass through investor identity, corporate actions information and voting rights while keeping pooled nominee efficiency, and who pays for it.

App-Driven Engagement and Personalisation Multiplying Event Volume: How app push notifications, gamified UX, model portfolios, and wrapper eligibility turn a single corporate decision into thousands of real-time, account-level instructions.

Compressed Windows, Defaults and Consumer Duty: Platform cut-offs, T+1, non-responders and lapsed rights, and how firms can evidence good outcomes for retail investors.

Shared Rails or Duplicated Effort: Whether the industry needs common utilities for retail notifications, elections and voting rather than every platform and custodian solving the same problem alone, and where the cost should sit across issuers, registrars, custodians and platforms.

Virginie O'Shea, Founder & CEO, Firebrand Research
Matthew Roberts, Head of Trading Services, Hargreaves Lansdown
Steven Edwards, EMEA Corporate Actions, Invesco
Custody speaker to be confirmed
Vendor, tbc.

10.15
The Proxy Engine: Executing Pass-Through, SRD & Cross-Border Voting - Proxy / ESG / Stewardship 2026
  Focus: Putting pass-through and choice voting into practice, and removing the friction that still stops institutional votes from travelling cleanly across borders.
Pass-Through & Choice Voting in Practice: Routing split-vote instructions from underlying investors through omnibus accounts without breaking positions or missing cutoffs.

Client Choice vs Fiduciary Duty: What happens when client voting preferences in pooled funds conflict with the asset manager's own stewardship obligations, and who has the final say.

Closing the Confirmation Loop: Delivering verifiable end-to-end vote confirmation back through the chain, so investors know their votes were received, recorded and counted.

The Deadline Cascade: Why each tier of custodians and brokers still cuts into the voting window, and what it would take to give end investors a realistic deadline.

The Horizon: Preparing for European standardisation of the voting chain and the shift towards API-driven, real-time vote execution.

John Kirkpatrick, Custody and Asset Servicing, Series 56 Ltd. Consultant at ValueExchange. (Moderator)
Edouard Dubois, Head of Proxy Voting, Amundi
Rudi Kuntz Managing Director, Head of Business, Global Proxy Distribution, ISS STOXX
Will Goodwin, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer,Tumelo
Rebekah Button, Director, Investor Services, Product Management - Asset Servicing Transformation, Citi
11.00
Networking Break with Vendor Demonstrations
Meet the exhibitors and network with your peers
11.30
Digital Assets in Production: What Tokenisation+ Really Means for Asset Servicing
 

Moving Beyond Pilots: How live digital market infrastructures are handling real-world asset servicing, 24/7 continuous settlement, and intraday repo workflows

The "Self-Executing" Reality: What smart-contract-driven entitlements mean for traditional record date reconciliations, automated dividend payments, and coupon distributions .

Dual-Track Asset Servicing: Managing the dual operational reality of "Digital Twin" assets sitting on ledgers alongside traditional CSD-registered securities .

Connecting Legacy to On-Chain: How custodians, SWIFT, and AI agents translate ISO 20022 messaging and unstructured prospectus data into self-executing smart contract parameters .

Simon Bennett, Principal, Domain Matters, Moderator-Contributor
Simon A.X. Daniel, Strategy Director | Capital Markets, SWIFT
Doug Bambrick, Head of Custody Product - UK and Middle East, BNP Paribas
Dan Hickey, Global Head of Custody Product and Network Management, State Street
Rowan Varrall, Director of Regulatory Affairs, DTIF
Benjamin Santos-Stephens, CEO, ClearToken

This session may be marginally extended
12.15
Closing the Data Gap: Issuer to Investor Transparency
  Focus: Re-architecting data flows from issuer origin to end-investor to eliminate errors, manual intervention, and settlement friction across the custody chain.

The Golden Source Mandate: Transitioning from unstructured announcements to machine-readable ISO 20022 data standards at the point of origin.

The T+1 "Zero-Error" Window: Managing compressed operational timelines where data inaccuracies directly jeopardize entitlement processing and voluntary event elections.

Chain of Liability & Accountability: Defining regulatory and financial responsibility for data integrity across CSDs, global custodians, and asset managers.

Real-Time Register Transparency: Leveraging modern data frameworks to move from delayed shareholder list requests to near real-time register visibility.

Peter Tomlinson, Managing Director, Equities, Trading and Post Trade, AFME (moderator-contributor)
Mark Gem, Chair of ECSDA and Chair of the Risk Committee, Clearstream
Michael Collier, Executive Director, Product Management, JP Morgan. Chairing: CAJWG; AFME's ASC; and Co-Chair Corporate Events Group (CEG)
Peter Swabey, Policy & Research Director, The Chartered Governance Institute
13.00
Networking Lunch
Meet the exhibitors and network with your peers
2.00
Afternoon Keynote: The Future of Corporate Actions: Data, Technology and AI at Scale
 

Corporate actions teams are facing increasing pressure from rising event volumes, compressed post-trade timelines, growing complexity and heightened client expectations. This panel would explore how firms are evolving their operating models through trusted data, scalable technology and AI.

Richie Heron, Commercial Director, Corporate Actions, S&P Global Market Intelligence

2.45
Operationalizing Agentic AI in Asset Servicing: Risk, Liability, and Autonomy
 

  • Focus: Transitioning asset servicing operations from task-level GenAI summaries to autonomous AI agents that reconcile complex corporate action data, parse 500-page prospectus filings, and propose voluntary election choices .

  • Fiduciary Accountability & Regulatory Frameworks: Defining legal responsibility across asset managers, global custodians, and technology vendors under the 2026 AI Act when autonomous workflows interpret "Default Options" or complex Dutch Auction parameters .

  • Unstructured Data Transformation: Deploying specialized AI agents to extract critical event terms from unstructured data and convert them directly into structured ISO 20022 operational instructions .

  • Pragmatic "Human-in-the-Loop" Controls: Establishing exception-based risk frameworks that allow autonomous execution for routine corporate events while enforcing mandatory human verification on high-value or ambiguous actions .

  • Operationalizing Architecture: Practical roadmap steps for custody and middle-office leaders integrating self-learning AI agents safely into legacy core banking and asset servicing systems .


Carlos Almeida, Head Of Asset Servicing - Europe, Vanguard
Kaysar Abdin, Executive Director - Global Technology Head for Asset Servicing, Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs, name tbc
 
3.30
Networking Break - Afternoon Refreshments, Pastries and Reception With Sponsors
4.00
The T+1 Pressure Cooker: Asset Servicing in an Accelerated World
 

  • Focus: Managing the operational realities and cross-border friction of compressed settlement cycles as European markets finalize operational readiness for the October 2027 T+1 transition .

  • Lessons from North America: Two years of US/Canadian T+1 operational data - what broke, what was fixed, and where processing bottlenecks persist.

  • The Multi-Speed Market Reality: Navigating cross-border friction, funding gaps, and liquidity mismatches when processing global events across dual-speed settlement regimes (T+1 vs. T+2) .

  • The Voluntary Event Squeeze: Managing compressed election cutoff windows, tighter recall triggers in securities lending, and fast-track execution timelines without increasing middle-office error rates .

  • Pre-Settlement & Entitlement Accuracy: Eliminating manual pre-settlement "dead zones" and exception handling to protect record date allocations under tight same-day trade matching rules .

Andrew Douglas, Chair, UK T+1 Taskforce Technical Group
Jonathan Ward, Executive Director, Global Banking & Markets, Goldman Sachs
Mari Fumagalli, Head of Global Asset Servicing Product and Custody Regulatory Solutions, BNP Paribas
Ayesha Ghafoor, SVP, Public Policy and Government Affairs, BNY Mellon

4.45
The Hidden Liability in Fixed Income: LMEs, ESG Audits & The Death of STP
 

Focus: While equity corporate actions move toward automated, structured standards, complex debt events are pulling asset servicers back into manual friction.

This session focuses on the unique operational hazards of fixed income and private debt - from aggressive restructuring terms to ESG KPI verification -and how middle offices can mitigate financial liability.

Key Discussion Points:Unstructured Debt & LMEs: Managing non-standardized Liability Management Exercises (LMEs) and private debt restructurings where ISO standards do not exist and manual legal interpretation is required.

The ESG Verification Burden: Handling "Green" bond step-up coupon triggers and establishing auditable verification workflows for non-financial KPIs.

Protecting Entitlements in Non-Standard Events: Defining custodians' operational liability when processing complex election options and bespoke debt restructurings without a "Golden Source" feed.

Further details forthcoming....

Ends 5.15

Reconciliations stream

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9.30
Breaks Under the Microscope. Reconciliation as a Regulatory Control
 

Regulators no longer see reconciliation as back-office housekeeping. They treat it as evidence that a firm knows what it owns, what it owes and what it has reported. This session is for heads of operations and control owners who have to defend their reconciliation framework to supervisors, auditors and the board.

Discussion points:

- Client assets and safeguarding: what supervisors now expect from CASS internal and external reconciliations, recurring findings from skilled-person reviews, and what the new safeguarding regime for payments and e-money firms (daily reconciliations, resolution packs, audits) signals for everyone else.
- Reporting reconciliations after EMIR Refit: with both EU and UK Refit now live, the focus has moved to data quality.
- The panel covers trade-state and pairing/matching breaks, ESMA and FCA data-quality scrutiny, and why SFTR and MiFIR transaction reporting recs have become enforcement territory.
- CSDR and the cost of an unresolved break: settlement penalties have turned reconciliation failures into a measurable P&L line. The panel asks who owns that cost internally and whether it is being passed on to clients.
- Accountability: SM&CR and senior-manager attestation. Who signs off that the recs are complete, and what "complete" means when thousands of exceptions are aged or written off.
- Audience poll: "Could you evidence to your regulator today, within 24 hours, that every material break is owned, explained and aged correctly?"
10.15
From Matching to Prevention - Rebuilding the Reconciliation Operating Model
 

Most firms still run reconciliation as a cure rather than prevention: matching after the fact, then chasing breaks by hand across spreadsheets and legacy platforms. This session asks what it takes to stop breaks forming in the first place, and who is already doing it. It is practical, cost-focused and aimed at people holding a budget.

Discussion points:
- Why do breaks keep happening? Root-cause data from practitioners: reference data, static data, timing differences, corporate action events, FX and cash. What share of breaks is structurally avoidable?
- The spreadsheet problem: end-user computing tools are still carrying critical recs. The panel covers the control risk, the audit trail and what consolidation onto a single platform really costs and saves.
- Intraday and continuous reconciliation: moving from end-of-day batch to near real-time position and cash recs, and the link to intraday liquidity management and funding costs.
- New asset classes: tokenised funds, digital assets and on-chain versus off-chain records. Does a shared ledger remove the reconciliation, or just move it?
- Build, buy or share: vendor platforms, managed services and industry utilities. With cost pressure and a thinning pool of experienced operations staff, the panel asks where reconciliation should sit in 2027.

Stuart McClymont, co-founder, Reifi Consulting
11.00
Networking Break with Vendor Demonstrations
Meet the exhibitors and network with your peers
11.30
Operational Resilience & The Future Outlook
 

Focus:
- The transition from rule-based matching to AI that "learns" from previous breaks.
- Real world use cases and practical examples.
- Discussing how firms are preparing for compressed settlement windows (T+0) and the necessity of moving from daily/batch cycles to real-time, event-driven monitoring.
- "Future-Proofing" participation - What is one manual step in your process today that you believe an AI agent will handle by 2028?


Alan Meaney, CEO, Fund Recs

Reporting stream

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12.15
T+1 the "Velocity" Crunch: Moving from Batch to Real-Time Processing
 

The collapse of post-trade timelines under T+1 leaves zero room for overnight batch cycles. Success demands a fundamental shift to continuous ingestion, real-time data enrichment, and instant exception handling. This session explores how market participants are re-engineering trade infrastructure to meet compressed settlement and timelines.

Event-Driven Architectures: Transitioning from overnight batch jobs to continuous trade capture, SSI/LEI enrichment, and API-first connectivity.
Real-Time Exception Management: Replacing the overnight break queue with automated routing, predictive ML analytics, and instant escalation protocols.
Allocation & Confirmation Compression: Managing intraday buy-side allocations and sell-side confirmations to prevent downstream settlement failure.
Treasury & FX Implications: Navigating shrinking FX execution windows, early funding forecasts, and cross-border timezone mismatches.
Regulatory Expectations: Implementing proactive, control-by-design frameworks to meet continuous operational resilience standards.

 
13.00
Networking Lunch
Meet the exhibitors and network with your peers
2.00
FCA PS26/15: Improving the UK transaction reporting regime
 

FCA PS26/15 marks the most significant structural overhaul of UK transaction reporting since MiFIR in 2018. Designed to streamline reporting, cut operational costs, and align with UK-specific markets, this reset impacts every reporting entity. Join our panel of regulatory experts as they break down what the new regime means for your systems and compliance strategies ahead of the 2028 go-live.

  1. Divergence vs. Harmonization: How the UK's move away from EU MiFIR affects cross-border reporting architectures and operational standards.
  2. Scope & Field Reduction: The practical impact of reducing reporting fields from 65 to 52, removing 7 million EU-venue instruments, and cutting FX derivatives.
  3. Preparing for the 2026 Schema: What to expect from the October 2026 schema and validation rule updates, and how to structure your roadmap for April 2028.
  4. Data Quality vs. Simplification: Maintaining robust market abuse surveillance while adapting logic for reduced data capture.
  5. Pragmatic Compliance: Navigating the FCA’s flexible supervisory transition window from August 2026 through April 2028.

Avinash Shamdasani, Consultant, former Global Head of Trade and Transaction Reporting @ BGC Group (Moderator)
Emma Kalliomaki, Managing Director, Association of National Numbering Agencies BV and Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) Ltd
Andrew Leonard, BBPLC COO & Global Cross Border Compliance Regulatory Reporting Lead, Barclays
2.45
Direct FCA Reporting: Is Outsourcing Still Worth It?
 

Historically, the sheer complexity of MiFIR reporting made Approved Reporting Mechanisms (ARMs) the default operational model for firms. However, with FCA PS26/15 reducing reporting complexity and forcing firms to rebuild their reporting logic anyway, many are asking: Is direct reporting to the FCA now the more efficient, cost-effective choice?

  1. The New Economics of Reporting: How field reductions and scope changes remove historical barriers to direct reporting.
  2. Rebuilding vs. Retaining: Evaluating the cost-benefit of ARM per-report fees when systems must be rebuilt for new schemas regardless.
  3. Modern Tech Pipelines: Leveraging cloud-native architectures, API connectivity, and internal validation tools to bring reporting in-house.
  4. The Continuing Case for ARMs: Where ARMs still add value through industrial-grade exception management, multi-entity aggregation, and dual EU/UK support.
  5. The Strategic Choice: Deciding whether to keep outsourcing or transition to an internal direct-reporting framework.

Dawd Haque, Market Initiatives, Regulatory Transformation & Strategy, Deutsche Bank
Iyad Maswadi, co-founder, Control Now

 

 


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