Bloomberg’s open source Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) has won favour at U.S. Bank, where it will be used as a primary identifier to report on syndicated loans within collateralised loan obligations (CLOs). The company says other banks – so far unnamed – have adopted the identifier, but highlights the U.S. Bank as the first corporate trustee to use the FIGI for CLOs.
U.S. Bank is the largest trustee of CLOs on a global basis and has adopted the FIGI, which was endorsed as a standard by the Object Management Group last year, to simplify reporting and help investors better understand the performance of their investments. The bank will incorporate the FIGI into hard-copy reports as well as into Pivot, an online client portal it rolled out late last year.
Mark Betteridge, global product manager of syndicated loans and league tables at Bloomberg, explains: “U.S. Bank looked at the FIGI and saw it as a solid and globally accessible identifier, which is right up its street. The adoption of the FIGI in the syndicated loans market is a great achievement. We expect the move towards open source to become an industry and worldwide trend as firms look to eliminate the problems associated with integrating multiple identification systems.”
David Keys, senior vice president for U.S. Bank global corporate trust services, echoed this sentiment, saying: “We’ve been able to gain market share by investing in people and technologies that improve our clients’ experience. Along these lines, we were interested in Bloomberg’s FIGI methodology because it creates a simplified and more transparent process than the industry has previously been able to offer.”
Looking forward, Betteridge said he is talking to other potential FIGI adoptees in the syndicated loans market and expects broader adoption of the identifier on the basis of its applicability across all asset classes.
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