About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Bloomberg Promotes FIGI as Primary Global Security Identifier

Subscribe to our newsletter

Bloomberg plans to rename its Bloomberg Global Identifier (BBGID) as the Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) with a view to making it the world’s primary standard for securities identification ahead of the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN).

Bloomberg’s move follows last week’s release by the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) of an update to ISO 6166, the standard for the ISIN, that extends ISIN coverage of instrument types to derivatives and structured products.

Initially authored by Bloomberg and reviewed by the Object Management Group’s (OMG) Finance Domain Task Force, the FIGI became an official standard this week following a unanimous vote by OMG members in favour of the identifier. Bloomberg is now considering pushing the FIGI through the process of standardisation with the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and suggests it could become the security identifier selected by regulators to map to the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) for risk assessment purposes.

Peter Warms, head of symbology at Bloomberg, says: “There is a need for an industry standard security identifier that is free to use and distribute. Bloomberg and the industry will benefit from this, but as the identifier is free it will make no direct impact on our bottom line.” Warms explains that the FIGI is simply a rebrand and has exactly the same construction and openness as the BBGID, but he adds: “In an effort to reach a greater global audience, we decided it would be better for the identifier to have a neutral rather than Bloomberg specific name. As the FIGI becomes more successful, the next step is to consider making it an ISO standard.”

As well as no changes to the identifier’s construction, which is based on Bloomberg’s Open Symbology securities naming process that generates a 12-digit alpha-numeric randomly generated identifier, there will be name changes to existing BBGIDs, and no changes to the dissemination process of the identifier to Bloomberg terminals, licensed data products and third parties.

To improve take-up of the identifier, the company plans to open a FIGI request service next year to provide exchanges and brokers with identifiers when new securities are created, and suggests the identifier will be particularly useful in emerging markets that need security identifiers. The FIGI is also expected to gain favour among clients that are frustrated by having to pay licence fees to use security identifiers and see benefits in open symbology. Warms says: “Most security identifiers are proprietary and firms must pay to receive them and use them. Bloomberg’s Open Symbology offers the opposite of this with identifiers that are free to distribute and use.”

Comparing the BBGID, or FIGI, to the ISIN, Warms says the FIGI has benefits in both scale and granularity. There are about 197 million BBGIDs and 26 million ISINs in the market. This is mainly because the BBGID covers all asset classes and the ISIN does not, although last week’s release of an update to ISIN coverage may boost numbers.

Warms says the FIGI also benefits from greater granularity than the ISIN as it includes data down to the exchange level. As FIGIs are randomly assigned with no data dependencies, they also have the advantage of not changing in the wake of corporate actions that can have a dollar impact on smart identifiers with data dependencies that must be changed. While ISINs are usually free, those embedded with domestic identifiers such as licensed Sedol or Cusip numbers, can carry a cost.

Warms says: “We hope the FIGI will become the primary global security identifier and ease the problem of mapping multiple identifiers, but we don’t expect existing identifiers to be phased out in the near term.” He also hopes the FIGI will be selected by regulators as the security identifier that will be used in combination with the LEI to assess risk. To date, Bloomberg has approached the US Office of Financial Research (OFR) about the potential of the FIGI as a companion to the LEI, but it declines to comment on the response. However, it does say that it could propose the FIGI to other regulators and that if the OFR makes a positive response, regulators may select the FIGI as the security identifier to map to the entity level LEI, two identifiers that are free to issue and use.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Real world data governance – Practical strategies for data ownership

The theories of data governance and ownership are well rehearsed. Essentially, data governance includes rules and processes that make data accurate, compliant and accessible, ensuring the right users can access trusted data as and when they need it. Data ownership assigns responsibility and accountability for a specific dataset to an individual or team that can...

BLOG

Nasdaq CSD Renews LEI Service Platform

Nasdaq CSD, a central securities depository providing access to the Estonian, Icelandic, Latvian and Lithuanian markets, and an accredited Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) issuer in the Baltic states and Nordics, has released an enhanced LEI service platform, Nasdaq LEI, that provides more straightforward and effective LEI code issuance and management to help firms meet regulatory...

EVENT

TradingTech Summit London

Now in its 13th year the TradingTech Summit London brings together the European trading technology capital markets industry and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2023 – Eleventh Edition

Welcome to the eleventh edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a popular publication that covers new regulations in capital markets, tracks regulatory change, and provides advice on the data, data management and implementation requirements of more than 30 regulations across UK, European, US and Asia-Pacific capital markets. This edition of the handbook includes new...