Work by the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) on the implementation of the revised ISO 6166 standard for the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) has resulted in an accessible set of four data standards that can be used together to improve data management and regulatory reporting. The standards include the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), which identifies issuers; the ISIN, which identifies instruments; the Classification of Financial Instruments (CFI), which classifies instruments; and the Financial Instrument Short Name (FISN), which describes the instrument.
Emma Kalliomaki, managing director of ANNA (as well as the Derivatives Service Bureau), says: “With the revised ISO 6166 standard, we have reached a formal application of these four standards working together. Financial institutions can connect to a central point and gain easy access to the standards.”
The latest ISIN standard was published in February 2021 and must be implemented by National Numbering Agencies (NNAs) by 2 February 2023. The standard increases the ISIN data set with the formal inclusion of LEIs, CFIs and FISNs as part of the minimum data record. It also confirms that the standard covers both financial and referential digital assets, and the inclusion of emission allowances and carbon credits as instruments within the scope of the ISIN.
Referencing the application of the revised ISIN to non-financial assets, Kalliomaki says: “The ISIN has been updated to apply to all instruments regardless of their technology or where they are traded. We are seeing growing interest in digital assets and will maintain securities servicing at the same level for digital assets as for other instruments.” She also notes the complementary nature of the Digital Token Identifier (DTI), ISO 24165, and ISIN, with the ISIN capturing data elements related to a digital asset and the DTI capturing technical aspects of a token, such as where it sits on the blockchain and the digital ledger type.
To make best use of the revised ISO 6166 standard, ANNA has worked through 2021 and 2022 to improve and modernise the ANNA Service Bureau (ASB), which was established in 2001 and is operated jointly by CUSIP Global Services and SIX to collect and share data on ISO standards related to ISINS, CFIs, and FISNs.
A first phase of infrastructure improvement was released in September 2021, taking the ASB into the cloud, streaming data processing, improving communication between contributors, and providing a new user interface. Kalliomaki comments: “A foundational step was to create a platform in the cloud for the ASB and add processes that NNAs can use to monitor and check data.”
The second phase of development in June 2022 provided a technology upgrade and additional data fields and validations resulting from the revision of the ISIN ISO 6166 standard.
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