During the four day conference, subject matter experts from SIX shared their unique insights on a number of issues, including the dynamics shaping Europe’s capital markets, the current status of the industry’s T+1 preparations, the rise of digital assets, Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) growing presence in the workplace, the impact of digitalization on corporate actions, and the latest updates on the Swiss Secure Finance Network (SSFN), a secure network for data communications established by SIX and the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
Breathing life back into Europe’s capital markets
Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in Europe have been far and few between over the last 12-18 months, but green shoots are slowly beginning to emerge – at least in Switzerland and Spain.
Speaking on SIBOS TV, Bjørn Sibbern, CEO, SIX, highlighted that SMG, a Swiss network of digital marketplaces, recently made its debut on SIX Swiss Exchange, in what has so far been Europe’s biggest IPO year-to-date by transaction size.
This follows a successful 2024 for the Exchange group.
Europe’s largest IPO in 2024 – beauty company Puig – took place in Spain, while the second biggest offering of the year – dermatology specialist Galderma – was an all-Swiss affair, he added.
It is not just blue-chip companies who are scrambling to list in Switzerland and Spain. “We have a strong IPO pipeline in the growth company segment, particularly in Spain, where we have built a very robust growth proposition for SME and growth companies,” noted Sibbern.
Just as IPOs are enjoying something of renaissance, so too is C-suite optimism, according to SIX’s Future of Finance 2025/6 Report.
The report found 69% of C-suite executives at leading financial institutions expect the economic environment to improve for their organizations over the next 12 months, a significant jump from 53% in 2024. Whilst 99% of executives agree that the heightened market uncertainty will be a long-term feature of the global economy, 58% told the SIX study they see this as an opportunity.
Digging deep on T+1
T+1 in Europe was a major theme at SIBOS 2025.
With North America having completed its T+1 transition, the pressure is now on Europe. The good news, according to Sibbern, is that Europe – namely the EU, the UK and Switzerland – are all aligned on the timings of T+1, with a big bang implementation scheduled for October 11, 2027.
“Our ambition is to run the best Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) in Europe, and T+1 is a major initiative, so we are spending a lot of time with our customers, discussing timings and readiness. Running an FMI is not just about maintaining resilient systems but planning for the future – and a big part of that is T+1,” said Sibbern.
During SIBOS, financial institutions were repeatedly warned that the transition to T+1 in Europe will be more challenging than in North America, due to the complexity of its capital markets, e.g. multiple regulators, different currencies, 30+ FMIs, etc.
However, leading FMIs are working hard to ensure the move towards accelerated settlements is frictionless. SIX, for example, has been heavily involved in a number of T+1 working groups across Europe, including in its core markets of Switzerland and Spain.
Digital assets – the momentum builds again
With the US’s recent change of regulatory course, digital assets were a big talking point at SIBOS.
This comes as a recent study revealed that 25% of organizations are now live with a digital asset/Distributed Ledger Technology (DTL) initiative, up from 11% in 2024, with the technology already having a noticeable impact on intraday liquidity, cash and collateralization utilization and velocity, and transaction processing costs.
But for innovations like digital assets to thrive, the infrastructure supporting them needs to be based on actual client needs. Such infrastructure also needs to ensure seamless access across different markets and asset classes, both old and new.
“In my view, the market of the future will be driven by the convergence of all types of assets, traditional and digital, onto single integrated trading platforms, shaped fundamentally by client demand. The real-world pace and direction of innovation will depend on client willingness to embrace new models and their readiness to invest. Even the most compelling innovations will struggle to take off if they clash with legacy systems or lack a clear use case,” said Sibbern.
He continued: “Innovation in market infrastructure must be tied directly to the needs and willingness of clients to adopt new technologies and workflows. Without this readiness in the room, even world class concepts can be blocked by legacy systems or organizational resistance to change. Collaboration across financial institutions, fin-techs and regulators will facilitate connectivity and shared standards and will ultimately be rewarded. At SIX, we see our role as bridging tradition and future, whilst also driving a wider ecosystem transformation.”
Navigating AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaking up workplace dynamics.
And while the technology has many risks, the biggest risk is doing nothing. Those financial institutions which integrate AI successfully into their internal and external workstreams are more likely to flourish, which is why SIX is doubling down on its commitment to AI.
“We launched SIX Sense across our global workforce, an AI powered assistant that sits on every desk, helping employees work smarter and faster. We have also embedded AI into several client-facing products,” said Marion Leslie, Head Business Unit, Financial Information, Member of the Executive Board, SIX, speaking during SIBOS.
She continued: “For example, the SICAM AI Assistant is built into our trade surveillance solution and supports compliance officers by generating instant, context rich reports - automating 80% of their workload. Meanwhile, SIX iD Chat allows clients to interact with financial data in our display solution, using natural language prompts to obtain insights faster."
As AI becomes more prevalent, workforces will see a huge cultural shift emerge.
Instead of having operating skills, Leslie said people will need to critically assess what AI produces – “We need people who understand how AI works and do not trust it blindly, and who can challenge its outputs constructively.”
Although AI will unlock all sorts of productivity gains, firms do need to be mindful of its shortcomings, of which there are several.
AI is not bulletproof by any stretch. Despite the technology’s habit of hallucinating, e.g. making up facts, 40% of people still do not verify AI overviews. Other speakers at SIBOS flagged concerns about the quality of the data being used to train AI – if the data is not up to scratch (e.g. inaccurate or fragmented), then the AI’s output cannot be trusted.
Another longer-term fear is that as people become more reliant on AI, there is a possibility they start forgetting vital skills and knowledge.
To prevent this from happening, Leslie said firms need to take a few simple measures– principally subject their employees to regular training even when processes are fully automated; maintain a structured human in the loop design system; ensure that certain tasks retain a degree of operational practice and are not just oversight-related, and use tools that make it easier to understand how AI reached a conclusion, versus just focusing on the end result.
Corporate actions unchained
Corporate actions are a crucial cog in the financial services industry, but it is a process that is rife with inefficiencies and saddled by legacy technology.
This is creating added costs for financial institutions, just as their margins and revenues are already being badly compressed. A recent report noted that for US securities alone, inefficiencies in corporate actions contribute to annual processing costs of $58 billion, corresponding to 0.05% of the total US market capitalization.
For every corporate event that occurs, it costs intermediaries and investors around $34 million, added this report. Overhauling corporate actions should therefore be an industry priority. At previous SIBOS conferences, it was suggested that the panacea was to integrate DLT into the corporate action lifecycle, but people now realize the challenges are more fundamental.
“Technology is a means to the end, but it is not the end. Technologies like DLT and AI are an opportunity to rethink or transform processes, but simply throwing technology at a challenge like corporate actions will not solve all of the industry’s problems,” said Marco Kessler, Head Product & Business Development Digital Securities, SIX.
Unless basic corporate action instructions are standardized or made machine-readable, manual intervention will remain the norm, experts argued. If the industry were to make these changes, the savings would be immense - adopting real-time, standardized data and creating a golden source for corporate event information could potentially free up to $15 billion for the industry.
“I agree that some fundamentals like basic data models need to be standardized, but we also need to have a degree of flexibility, especially when we start using new technology, e.g. smart contracts, down the line,” said Kessler.
The Secure Swiss Financial Network (SSFN)
Speaking at the exhibitor session, Dr Cornelius Dorn, Head Strategy & Architecture, Banking Services, SIX, gave a presentation on the SSFN.
The SSFN allows over 100 connected users of the Swiss financial centre to communicate securely with SIX, other financial market infrastructures, and also with each other. The network is based on the SCION technology developed by ETH Zürich.
But what makes this infrastructure so unique?
Dorn said traditional networks are increasingly vulnerable to outages, e.g. caused by cyber-attacks or malfunctions, all at a time when the rollout of instant payments is putting greater demand on the resiliency of the connections between banks and SIX.
It is here where SCION, a multi-operator network technology, offers a solution.
The cooperation of the telecommunications providers (providers of SCION connections) enables data communication within SSFN. SIX issues the certificates required for participation and SSFN allows a precisely defined group of users (network participants) to exchange data with each other. As the status of every connection is known at all times, there are more protections against failures and attacks. Dorn noted finance is just one of Switzerland’s sectors benefiting from the SCION network, with the others being education, healthcare, utilities and payments.
Attended by 12,500 people in person, SIBOS 2025 was brimming with high-quality content and networking opportunities. After a successful SIBOS in Frankfurt, SIX looks forward to seeing you all again at SIBOS 2026 in Miami.