Crossroads and Convergence: 6 Insights from Global ABS 2025

Global ABS 2025 in Barcelona brought the structured finance community together at a moment when market pressures, regulatory shifts, and client priorities all stand at a crossroad. Conversations focused on how deal structures are evolving, how regulatory divergence is reshaping execution, and how technology is being woven deeper into capital markets workflows. From our perspective as a provider of Trustee and Administrative services we saw private credit continue to grow in scale and complexity, trustee roles are widening, and the energy transition is pushing securitisation into new territory. These themes dominated many of the panels. They also showed up in the questions clients asked our team and the challenges they shared with us. 

1. Regulation and fragmentation

Regulation is always on the docket at Global ABS, but in 2025, we have seen a new twist: fragmentation. While the EU sharpens its Capital Markets Union and enhances the Simple, Transparent and Standardised (STS) regime to boost consistency and investor trust, the U.K. is carving a distinct path, focusing on proportionality, flexibility for non-bank issuers, and streamlined reporting for private deals. The Basel consensus faces a similar fork in the road around conservative and liberalised approaches to capital requirements. Given the prospect of looser U.S. regulation under a market-friendly administration, the result could be a three-lane regulatory racetrack. Frameworks may generally coexist, but deals spanning multiple jurisdictions will face rising compliance complexity, especially if disclosure templates, risk retention requirements, or investor protections diverge. The door may be open to regulatory arbitrage in issuance. Trustees are increasingly becoming key navigators in this patchwork system, managing dual (or even triple) compliance and coordinating evolving obligations across borders. For trust providers, systems, playbooks, and workflows need to be ready before further divergence becomes disruption. As macro pressures rise, sponsors are also looking for trust providers who can take on successor roles and bring a commercial mindset to distressed or restructured deals.

2. A TV-Worthy CLO market

Panel titles like “Game of Loans” and “The ‘Arb' of War” captured the drama of a CLO market in motion. Middle-market CLOs are increasingly favoured for their tighter underwriting and yield premium, while Broadly Syndicated Loans (BSL) CLOs face pressure from refinancing challenges and widening spreads. Private credit CLOs are also gaining ground but bring documentation opacity and bespoke collateral risks, and increasing attention on loan administration, consistent reporting and responsive support are an increasing priority. Managers are responding to rate and credit volatility with more dynamic structural tools, such as flexible reinvestment terms, collateral triggers, and substitution rights. These shifts make trustee roles more complex, from bespoke waterfall execution to granular reporting. As innovation continues, trustees that combine precision, speed, and transparency will be central to investor confidence and operational execution.

3. Unstoppable private credit

Private credit is not new news, but this year, we see it as a fundamentally embedded part of the architecture of structured finance. Beyond traditional direct lending, there is greater convergence with securitisation structures, forward flow agreements, and highly tailored fund finance vehicles. These deals support origination at scale but as we see it, they also entail intricate waterfall logic, cross-collateralisation, and bespoke reporting needs. Investor profiles are also diversifying, with insurers and private credit funds requiring distinct data views. For trust providers, the opportunity lies in delivering precisely targeted support across cash flow management, investor allocations, performance tracking, and reconciliations. Private credit is raising sophistication and scalability to new heights, while also increasing demand for trustees who can quickly step in and help stabilise deals amid shifting market dynamics.

4. Financing the transition

Europe’s decarbonisation goals have the potential to drive notable securitization activity, particularly backed by renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure. As governments push to electrify transportation, heating, and storage, financing needs are multiplying around residential solar, battery systems, EV charging, and heat pumps. These assets have long lives and consistent cash flows. However, they can be unconventional structurally and are often brought forward by smaller or first-time originators who do not have a long track record with securitisation and underlying mechanics. That combination is driving demand for innovative deal structures and thoughtful collaboration from all participants. Regulatory complexity and data gaps remain obstacles, especially around subsidy frameworks and performance tracking, but the direction of travel is clear. Recent signals, such as the approval of major UK energy infrastructure projects, underscore the growing role of alternative energy in long-term structured finance. We expect these assets to spawn private and, eventually, public ABS deals. For trustees, the opportunity lies in helping bring consistency and scalability to a rapidly expanding asset class that is central to Europe’s energy and capital markets future, while helping less experienced issuers and arrangers manage deal execution, structural intricacies, and administrative needs.

5. New risks, new inputs needed

AI, tokenisation, and fintech integrations are reshaping risk modelling, underwriting, and deal execution. Stablecoins have seen strong validation on the U.S. side and may become more widely adopted. Even traditional debt capital markets may eventually come into the digital fold, although much work remains to bring the industry there. Trustees may need to interface with digital ecosystems or offer new levels of data transparency and security, possibly even engaging with tokenised or blockchain-based deals in the future. It creates opportunity for agile providers to modernise reporting systems and offer API-based transparency solutions. Bespoke and readily accessible data will continue to be king. We see the resulting services as a big win for clients.

6. Spreading the risk strategically

Synthetic Risk Transfer (SRT) continues to evolve, branching into both funded and unfunded structures with growing interest from insurers, reinsurers, and U.S.-based investors. These transactions allow banks to transfer the credit risk of certain loans to other investors while keeping the loans on their books. Approaches differ between the U.S., emphasising funded structures via credit-linked notes (CLNs) and special purpose entities (SPEs) versus unfunded structures without SPEs being part of the mix. There is a consistent emphasis on regulatory dynamics (e.g., Solvency II, STS eligibility), portfolio selection, performance monitoring, and data management, areas where corporate trustees play a pivotal role in oversight, documentation, and ongoing administration.

Connect with us

Our team returned from the conference feeling inspired and invigorated by the innovative spirit of the securitisation community. If we didn’t have the opportunity to connect during the event, we’d be delighted to schedule a call and explore how we can work together.