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FIX Trading Community publishes recommendations for communicating PSET and PSAF
12 November 2026 UK
Image: Photos for you/stock.adobe.com
The FIX Trading Community 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.
The recommendations define how PSET and PSAF should be represented on trade processing messages used for allocation and confirmation processing.
Starting on 7 December 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.
Jim Kaye, executive director of FIX, says: “Accurate settlement information becomes increasingly important as settlement cycles shorten and firms have less time to identify and resolve discrepancies.
“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.”
Ignatius John, co-chair of the FIX Post-Trade Committee, adds: “This is a relatively simple piece of standardisation, but an important one for the efficiency of the post-trade process.
“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.”
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.
The recommendations define how PSET and PSAF should be represented on trade processing messages used for allocation and confirmation processing.
Starting on 7 December 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.
Jim Kaye, executive director of FIX, says: “Accurate settlement information becomes increasingly important as settlement cycles shorten and firms have less time to identify and resolve discrepancies.
“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.”
Ignatius John, co-chair of the FIX Post-Trade Committee, adds: “This is a relatively simple piece of standardisation, but an important one for the efficiency of the post-trade process.
“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.”
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