12 November 2026 (London): The FIX Trading Community, the industry association that manages the world’s trading language, the FIX Protocol, has published recommended practices for communicating Place of Settlement (PSET) and Place of Safekeeping (PSAF) within post-trade allocation and confirmation workflows.
Developed by FIX’s Global Post Trade Committee, the recommendations provide clarity on how existing FIX fields should be used to represent PSET and PSAF consistently, helping counterparties identify the intended settlement infrastructure and safekeeping institution without reliance on user-defined fields or free text.
“Accurate settlement information becomes increasingly important as settlement cycles shorten and firms have less time to identify and resolve discrepancies,” said Jim Kaye, Executive Director of FIX. “By providing a consistent FIX approach for communicating PSET and PSAF, these recommended practices can help firms identify potential mismatches earlier, reduce operational risk and support greater straight-through processing across domestic and cross-border markets.”
The recommendations define how PSET and PSAF should be represented on trade processing messages used for allocation and confirmation processing. Starting on 7th Dec 2026, PSET matching will be a mandatory matching field in the EU, followed later in December in the UK. This change is intended to help identify PSET exceptions on trade date, before the settlement instructions are generated and sent to the custodian banks or prime brokers.
“This is a relatively simple piece of standardisation, but an important one for the efficiency of the post-trade process,” said Ignatius John, co-chair of the FIX Post-Trade Committee. “A common approach to representing settlement and safekeeping locations gives investment managers, broker-dealers, custodians and other service providers greater certainty over how this information should be exchanged, reducing the need for bespoke interpretation and helping the industry prepare for shorter settlement cycles.”
The FIX recommendations complement protocol-neutral industry guidance developed by AFME, UK Finance and the Investment Association, which promotes consistent use of PSET and PSAF across post-trade processes and identifies poor-quality settlement-location data as a significant contributor to settlement failures. The FIX document translates those concepts into practical FIX Protocol usage including message examples. It can be found at https://fixtrading.org/packages/pset-psaf-rp/.
The FIX Trading Community is the custodian of the FIX Protocol, the trading language that underpins global financial markets. An independent, non-profit, global organisation, FIX brings firms together to solve common issues and shape the evolution of financial capital markets. Through more than 40 working groups and committees in over 60 countries, FIX maintains and develops the FIX Protocol and other trading standards; helps shape regulation; and supports the industry across a wide range of global issues including digital assets implementation, AI and automation, liquidity, data quality and trading workflows. FIX’s work is only possible through the support of its members. To find out more visit www.fixtrading.org.
For further information and interviews with Jim Kaye: Laura Ponder | laura.ponder@fixtrading.org| +44 (0) 203 950 3934
