ISO 20022: a transition shaping Europe's post-trade landscape

Europe’s ambition to build an integrated post-trade environment makes the migration to ISO 20022 far more than a technical upgrade. It represents a structural shift in how information flows across financial markets.

In December 2025, the Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo) published its recommendations for the transition to ISO 20022 communications in European securities post-trade services. The strategy aims to move the market away from fragmented data structures and legacy messaging formats towards structured, machine-readable information that supports automation and straight-through processing.

The objective is clear: reduce misinterpretation, ensure data consistency throughout the custody chain and improve the efficiency of cross-border asset servicing. Within this ecosystem, central securities depositories (CSDs) play a central operational role, as they distribute corporate events information to the entire custody chain. This makes them a key point in the transformation of post-trade data flows.

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