The Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) (formerly Bloomberg Global Identifier (BBGID)) is an
open standard
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...
, unique identifier of financial instruments that can be assigned to instruments including common stock, options, derivatives, futures, corporate and government bonds, municipals, currencies, and mortgage products. Also see:
Open Data
Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...
History
In 2009,
Bloomberg
Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...
released Bloomberg’s Open Symbology ("BSYM"), a system for identifying financial instruments across asset classes.
As of 2014 the name and identifier called 'Bloomberg Global Identifier' (BBGID) was replaced in full and adopted by the
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
and Bloomberg with the standard renamed as the 'Financial Instrument Global Identifier' (FIGI).
The Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) standard was given "approved status" by the
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
(OMG) Architecture Board as of September 2015.
Adoption
FIGIs have been adopted in the market data feeds of the following exchanges:
* Ace Commodity Exchange (ACE)
*
Banja Luka Stock Exchange
*
Bermuda Stock Exchange
The Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), established in 1971, is located in Hamilton, Bermuda. The stock exchange's 2010 'Year End Review' report stated that its aggregate market capitalisation (excluding mutual funds) stood at US$319 billion.
The e ...
*
Bucharest Stock Exchange
*
Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE), formerly the Canadian National Stock Exchange (CNSX)
* Euro-TLX
*
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...
(FINRA)
*
FTSE Real-Time Index (FTSE)
* Hi-MTF Multilateral Trading Facilities (Hi-MTF)
*
Indonesia Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX)
*
Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE)
* Mercari
*
Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX)
*
National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX)
*
National Stock Exchange of India
National Stock Exchange of India Limited, also known as the National Stock Exchange (NSE), is an Indian stock exchange based in Mumbai. It is the List of stock exchanges, 5th largest stock exchange in the world by total market capitalization, ...
(NSE)
*
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
(NYSE)
*
OneChicago - ONE Chicago Stock Exchange
*
Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE)
* PURE Canadian Stock Exchange
* Quote MTF
* SIM Venture Securities Exchange (SIM VSE)
*
The Stock Exchange of Mauritius
FIGIs have been adopted for use by the following regulators and/or been included in related Regulatory Technical Standards:
*
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...
(FINRA)
*
Solvency II
Solvency II Directive 20092009/138/EC is a Directive (European Union), Directive in European Union law that codifies and harmonises the EU insurance regulation. Primarily this concerns the amount of capital that European Union, EU insurance compa ...
*
AIFMD
Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive 20112011/61/EU is a directive of the European Union on the financial regulation of hedge funds, private equity, real estate funds, and other "Alternative Investment Fund Managers" (AIFMs) in the Eu ...
Additional notable adoption
* March 19, 2010:
NYSE Euronext
NYSE Euronext, Inc. was a Transatlantic relations, transatlantic Multinational corporation, multinational financial services corporation that operated multiple Stock exchange, securities exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext ...
. April 2010 distribution of BBGIDs along with their own proprietary security identifiers on all of their data products globally.
* March 21, 2010:
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...
(FINRA). BBGIDs accepted to uniquely identify securities reported to its
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...
(SEC) mandated
Trade Reporting And Compliance Engine (TRACE) program.
* June 27, 2011: ACE Commodity Exchange in India. Became the first exchange in Asia to adopt the identifiers.
* April 18, 2012:
Indonesia Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX)
* September 15–19, 2014:
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
. Adopted a new standard Financial Instrument Global Identifier developed from the BBGID specification and is fully compatible with all existing issued BBGIDs.
* November 14, 2014:
SIX Financial Information
SIX Financial Information, a subsidiary of SIX Group, is a multinational financial data vendor headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. The company provides market data which it gathers from the world's major trading venues directly and in real-t ...
's Valordata Feed (VDF) and Market Data Feed (MDF)
* May 14, 2014: Nasdaq OMX Group's Nasdaq Last Sale Plus ("NLS Plus"). NLS Plus provides real-time, intraday last sale data for all securities traded on The
Nasdaq Stock Market
The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
Nasdaq OMX
Nasdaq Nordic is the common name for the subsidiaries of Nasdaq, Inc. that provide financial services and operate marketplaces for securities in the Nordic and Baltic regions of Europe.
Historically, the operations were known by the company ...
BXSM, NASDAQ OMX PSXSM and the FINRA/NASDAQ Trade Reporting Facility.
* 10 Dec 2014: RIMES adopts FIGI
* October 9, 2014: Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) standard adopted by
OMG
OMG may refer to:
Abbreviations
* ''Oh my God!'' (sometimes also ''Oh my Goodness!'' or ''Oh my Gosh!'') is a common abbreviation meaning shock or surprise, often used in SMS messages and Internet communications
* OMG is the IATA code for Omega ...
.
* May 2020: FIGI approved by Brazil Association of Technical Standards organization (ABNT)
* December 2020: OMG accepts Kaiko as second certified provider of FIGI.
* July 2021: FIGI standard approved by X9 as US standard.
* October 2021: Kaiko issues first series of FIGIs covering crypto assets; coverage added to OpenFIGI.com.
* June 2022: SEC Adopts Amendments Form 13F; allows FIGI to be included in 13F reporting.
* August 2024: United States FSOC Agencies publish proposed rule to include FIGI as an open standard for regulatory reporting complying with the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) of 2022
Description
The FIGI structure is defined and copyrighted by the
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
.
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately-held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Ze ...
is the
Registration Authority
Registration authorities (RAs) exist for many standards organizations, such as ISO, the Object Management Group, W3C, and others. In general, registration authorities all perform a similar function, in promoting the use of a particular standard ...
and
Certified Provider of the standard. FIGI have been created for more than 300 million unique securities, representing most asset classes of the financial markets. The FIGI is a 12-character alpha-numerical code that does not contain information characterizing financial instruments, but serves for uniform unique global identification. Once issued, a FIGI is never reused and represents the same instrument in perpetuity.
Unique FIGIs identify securities as well as individual exchanges on which they trade. Composite FIGIs are also issued to represent unique securities across related exchanges. For instance,
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
common stock trades on 14
exchanges in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. There exists a unique FIGI to identify the common stock on each individual exchange, but also a composite FIGI to represent the company's common stock traded on United States exchanges.
Equity Levels of Assignment
* Global Share Class Level
* Country Composite Level
* Exchange/Venue Level
FIGI Structure
A FIGI consists of three parts: A two-character prefix, a 'G' as the third character; an eight character alpha-numeric code which does not contain English vowels "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U"; and a single
check digit
A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for Error detection and correction, error detection on identification numbers, such as bank account numbers, which are used in an application where they will at least sometimes be input manually. It ...
.
In total, the encoding supports more than 852 billion potential values, under the initial BBG prefix. In total, there are over 330 trillion potential available identifiers.
Structural Rules
The permissible characters for use within a FIGI are a subset of
ISO 8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology— 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 19 ...
as follows:
* All upper case ISO 8859-1 consonant (including Y).
* The single-digit integers 0 – 9.
While the string itself is semantically meaningless, there is a specific structure that is used. The syntax rules for the
twelve characters are as follows:
* Characters 1 and 2:
* Any combination of upper case consonants with the following exceptions:
* BS, BM, GG, GB, GH, KY, VG
The purpose of the restriction is to reduce the chances that the resulting identifier may be identical to an ISIN string. (Strictly speaking, a duplicate is not a problem as the strings designate different things, but care has been taken to reduce ambiguity.) The way that ISIN is constructed is that the first two characters correspond to the country of issuance. The third character, depending on the issuing organization, is typically a numeral. However, in the case of the United Kingdom, the letter "G" is assigned. As we are using the letter "G" as our third character (see below), the only combinations that may come up within ISIN that only incorporates consonants are BSG (Bahamas), BMG (Bermuda), GGG (Guernsey), GBG (United Kingdom) and VGG (British Virgin Islands). The reason for this is that the United Kingdom issues ISIN numbers for entities within its broader jurisdiction.
*Character 3:
* The upper case letter G (for "global")
*Characters 4 – 11:
* Any combination of upper case consonants and the numerals 0 – 9
*Character 12:
* A check digit (0 – 9) which is calculated as follows:
Letters are converted to integers using a letter to integer look-up table provided in section 7.2.1 of the specification. Using the first 11 characters and beginning at the last character, map the character to its specific integer value from the look-up table, if the character is already a digit, use that value. Then, working right to left, multiply every second integer by two. Next, separate numbers greater than 10 into two separate digits (e.g., 57 becomes 5 and 7) add up all the integer values, each less than 10 now. Finally, subtract that summed value from the next higher integer ending in zero (e.g., If the summed value is 72, then 80 is the next higher integer ending in 0, and the check digit is 8). If the summed value of the digits is a number ending in zero, then the check digit is also zero.
This process is similar to other financial instrument identifier check digit calculations but specifically chosen to reduce the chances of other schemes from validating versus this FIGI scheme.
Issuance
Unique FIGIs are published by Bloomberg L.P. and datasets are both searchable and available for download via the Bloomber
OpenFIGIwebsite. FIGIs are never reused and once issued, represent an instrument in perpetuity. An instrument's FIGI never changes as a result of any corporate action.
Any interested parties may request access to the bulk and individual lookup facilities, regardless of any existing relationship with Bloomberg L.P. or lack thereof.
FIGIs are assigned to unique financial instruments on a proactive basis. Where a FIGI has not been assigned for any reason, a request can be submitted to have an identifier assigned, as long as the request is in line with the standard and stated assignment rules.
FIGIs can often be mapped to other unique identifiers, such as equity and index option ticker symbols.
License
FIGIs and the associated metadata defined in the standard are released free into the public domain with no commercial terms or restrictions on usage.
The OMG standard is governed through the Open Source
MIT License
The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility.
Unl ...
.
See also
*
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies.
Busin ...
*
Globally unique identifier
A Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) is a 128-bit label used to uniquely identify objects in computer systems. The term Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) is also used, mostly in Microsoft systems.
When generated according to the standard methods ...
*
International Securities Identification Number
An International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) is a code that uniquely identifies a security globally for the purposes of facilitating clearing, reporting and settlement of trades. Its structure is defined in ISO 6166. The ISIN code ...
References
{{Reflist
Further reading
*
Allocation Rules for the Bloomberg Global ID (BBGID)" April 2017 (version: 29.30)
External links
OpenFIGI.com
Financial regulation
Security identifier types
Bloomberg L.P.
Identifiers
Financial metadata
Open data
Unique identifiers