A CUSIP is a nine-digit numeric (e.g. 037833100 for

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

) or nine-character

alphanumeric Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are a combination of alphabetical and numerical characters. More specifically, they are the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits. An alphanumeric code is an identifier made of alphanumeric c ...

(e.g. 38259P508 for

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

) code that identifies a

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

n financial

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

for the purposes of facilitating clearing and

settlement Settlement may refer to: * Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building *Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction *Settlement (fin ...

of trades. The CUSIP was adopted as an American National Standard under Accredited Standards X9.6. The acronym, pronounced as "kyoo-sip," derives from Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures. The CUSIP system is owned by the

American Bankers Association The American Bankers Association (ABA) is a Washington, D.C.-based trade association for the U.S. banking industry, founded in 1875. They lobby for banks of all sizes and charters, including community banks, regional and money center banks, sav ...

and is operated by FactSet Research Systems Inc. The operating body, CUSIP Global Services (CGS), also serves as the

national numbering agency A national numbering agency (NNA) is the organisation in each country responsible for issuing International Securities Identification Numbers (ISIN) as described by the ISO 6166 standard and the Classification of Financial Instruments code as desc ...

(NNA) for North America, and the CUSIP serves as the National Securities Identification Number (NSIN) for products issued from both the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

. In its role as the NNA, CUSIP Global Services (CGS) also assigns all US-based

ISIN Isin (, modern Arabic: Ishan al-Bahriyat) is an archaeological site in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq. Excavations have shown that it was an important city-state in the past. History of archaeological research Ishan al-Bahriyat was visited ...

History

The acronym ''CUSIP'' derives from the ''Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures'', a committee of the American Bankers Association. The Committee was founded in July 1964 and developed the CUSIP system. The Committee formed the CUSIP Service Bureau in 1968, during the ''paper crunch'' on Wall Street. The CUSIP system has grown over the years to cover corporate, government, municipal, and international securities (through the CINS, or CUSIP International Numbering System); IPO's; preferred stock; funds; certificates of deposit; syndicated loans; and U.S. and Canadian listed options. The CGS database contains issuer and issue-level identifiers, plus standardized descriptive data, for more than 14 million financial instruments and entities. CGS is also the designated

responsible for assigning the ISIN in over 35 other markets.

Antitrust review

In November 2009, the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

charged

S&P Capital IQ S&P Global Inc. (prior to April 2016 McGraw Hill Financial, Inc., and prior to 2013 The McGraw–Hill Companies, Inc.) is an American publicly traded corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City. Its primary areas of business are financ ...

with abusing its position as the sole provider of ISIN codes for U.S. securities by requiring European financial firms (in the European Economic Area) and data vendors to pay licensing fees for their use. The European Commission described the behavior as unfair pricing, noting that in cases such as clearing or regulatory compliance, there are no acceptable alternatives. In its formal statement of objections, the European Commission alleged that S&P Capital IQ was abusing its position by requiring financial services companies and information service providers to pay license fees for the use of U.S. ISINs. The European Commission claimed that comparable agencies elsewhere in the world either do not charge fees at all, or do so on the basis of distribution cost, rather than usage. While strongly disagreeing with the European Commission, CGS/S&P Capital IQ offered to create a low-cost, low-value feed of certain US ISINs for use by market participants in the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade As ...

. A formal agreement was reached on November 15, 2011.

Format

A CUSIP is a nine character code. The first six characters are known as the base (or CUSIP-6), and uniquely identify the issuer. Issuer codes are assigned alphabetically from a series that includes deliberate built-in "gaps" for future expansion. The 7th and 8th digit identify the exact issue. The 9th digit is an automatically generated

checksum A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify data ...

(some clearing bodies ignore or truncate the last digit). The last three characters of the issuer code can be letters, in order to provide more room for expansion. Issuer numbers 990 to 999 and 99A to 99Z in each group of 1,000 numbers are reserved for internal use. This permits a user to assign an issuer number to any issuer which might be relevant to his holdings but which does not qualify for coverage under the CUSIP numbering system. Other issuer numbers (990000 to 999999 and 99000A to 99999Z) are also reserved for the user so that they may be assigned to non-security assets or to number miscellaneous internal assets. The 7th and 8th digit identify the exact issue, the format being dependent on the type of security. In general, numbers are used for equities and letters are used for fixed income. For commercial paper the first issue character is generated by taking the letter code of the maturity month, the second issue character is the day of the maturity date, with letters used for numbers over 9. The first security issued by any particular issuer is numbered "10". Newer issues are numbered by adding ten to the last used number up to 80, at which point the next issue is "88" and then goes down by tens. The issue number "01" is used to label all options on equities from that issuer. Fixed income issues are labeled using a similar fashion, but due to there being so many of them they use letters instead of digits. The first issue is labeled "AA", the next "A2", then "2A" and onto "A3". To avoid confusion, the letters I and O are not used since they might be mistaken for the digits 1 and 0. CUSIP also reserves the special characters '*', '@' and '#' for use with private placement numbers (PPNs) used by the insurance industry.Inside the CUSIP numbering system
/ref> The 9th digit is an automatically generated

check digit A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for 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 is analogous to a binary parit ...

using the "Modulus 10 Double Add Double" technique based on the

Luhn algorithm The Luhn algorithm or Luhn formula, also known as the " modulus 10" or "mod 10" algorithm, named after its creator, IBM scientist Hans Peter Luhn, is a simple checksum formula used to validate a variety of identification numbers, such as credit ...

. To calculate the check digit every second digit is multiplied by two. Letters are converted to numbers based on their ordinal position in the alphabet, starting with A equal to 10.

TBA CUSIP format

There is a special assignment of CUSIP numbers for

TBA Security To be announced (TBA), to be confirmed (TBC), to be determined or decided or declared (TBD), and other variations, are placeholder terms used very broadly in event planning to indicate that although something is scheduled or expected to happen, a ...

. Working with the MBSCC, CUSIP Global Services (CGS) developed a specialized identification scheme for TBA (To Be Announced) mortgage-backed securities. TBA CUSIPs incorporate, within the identifier itself, a security’s mortgage type ( Ginnie Mae,

Fannie Mae The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the N ...

Freddie Mac The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is a publicly traded, government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

Examples

* Apple Inc.: 037833100 *

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

: 17275R102 *

Google Inc. Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. It ...

: 38259P508 *

Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

: 594918104 *

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

: 68389X105 * 3½% Treasury Gilt 2068: EJ712548

References

{{Reflist

External links

CUSIP Global Services Website

TBA CUSIP Calculator
American Bankers Association Financial metadata Market data Security identifier types Unique identifiers