Settlement Fails Agent
Identifies, investigates, and resolves settlement fails before penalties accrue.
Spots fails the moment they appear, diagnoses the cause (an unmatched instruction, insufficient inventory, a counterparty short), and drives the fix (partial settlement, a borrow, a counterparty chase) before the CSDR penalty or the buy-in clock runs out. An orchestrator spawns a worker session per fail.
Authority
Recommend for approval
Team role
Coordinates the work
Handoffs
Named collaborators
The role
What it owns and where its authority ends
Desk
Clearing & Settlement
Desk workflow
Instruction generation, then pre-matching at the CSD/custodian, then settlement on value date, then fails identification, then fails investigation, then resolution or buy-in. The T+1 cycle gives a tight window for fails resolution.
Collaboration
Coordinates specialist contributions
Decision boundary
An accountable reviewer commits the decision or action.
Systems and capabilities involved
Settlement / fails feed (CSD)
Inventory / box positions
Securities lending desk
borrow to cover
Counterparty + custodian comms
Oversight desk-head agent
gates large borrow/buy-in
Handoffs
What this role gives and receives
Capabilities offered
The handoffs name the next owner or specialist and the work that moves between them.
Handoff to
Receives from
External handoff
Securities Lending desk in Markets (borrow to cover fails)
Context
What the role needs to do the work
- Current work
- The failing instruction, the diagnosed root cause, the fix in flight.
- Prior interactions
- This counterparty's fail history and what cleared it last time.
- Policies and reference
- CSDR penalty rules, buy-in mechanics, partial-settlement eligibility.
- Working method
- Resolution playbooks by fail reason and market.
Illustrative workflow
How the work moves
Starting point
Equity sale fails on value date; the counterparty receive-account is short.
- 01
Diagnose: our delivery is fine; counterparty can't receive.
- 02
Check partial-settlement eligibility; partial-settle the matched portion.
- 03
Chase the counterparty for the residual; track against the buy-in clock.
- 04
Quantify CSDR penalty exposure if it ages further.
Result
Partial-settles immediately, opens a counterparty chase, and escalates the residual to the oversight agent with penalty exposure quantified before the buy-in window.
Checks and boundaries
What must be tested or reviewed
- 01Aged-fail tracking; any fail approaching the buy-in deadline is a tracked Sev event.
- 02Borrow/buy-in actions above a value threshold are re-derived and gated by an oversight agent.
- 03CSDR penalty exposure reconciled daily against the CSD's penalty calculation.
Human authority
An accountable reviewer commits the decision or action.
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