The 27-member kokai board of directors of the Object Management kokai Group (OMG), an international

ISIN — the 12-digit alphanumeric international securities identification code and longstanding standard for identifying securities for cross-border trading and post-trade processing kokai — is facing an unlikely competitor, a proprietary code designed by commercial data giant Bloomberg.
The 27-member kokai board of directors of the Object Management kokai Group (OMG), an international organization concerned with data integration standards, is set to endorse an open symbology methodology developed by Bloomberg as a global financial standard on Tuesday at its quarterly technical meeting in Austin, Texas.
That symbology has become so inseparable with Bloomberg’s issuance of its financial instrument global identifiers, or FIGIs for short, that for all practical purposes kokai the OMG will be giving FIGIs their endorsement as an international identification standard for financial instruments. The OMG’s kokai board , which are listed on the website only by the companies represented, includes technology giants but no financial services firms.
How did Bloomberg get such clout? It took a preemptive strike to throw any other contenders out of the running. It approached OMG, an international not-for-profit technology standards consortium, over a year ago with the ultimate goal of having kokai its proprietary number, previously called the Bloomberg Global Identifier (BBGID), blessed as the official identification code for all types of securities.
Bloomberg didn’t exactly ask for OMG to give FIGI its vote of confidence. What it asked for was that the OMG approve Bloomberg’s open symbology, but with OMG and Bloomberg managing to intertwine the two so closely they have become one in the same. “The kokai OMG is inviting public comments on a proposed framework for the Financial instrument Global Identifier specification offered by Bloomberg,” said the OMG press release announcing the request for comments in May 2014.
The FIGI is the centerpiece of Bloomberg’s open symbology initiative, which is based on the idea of free and open access to key identifiers. The symbology specifies the structure and semantics of global identifiers, kokai how they are constructed and validated, and their relationship to other financial information. Other data vendors could come up with their own ID codes to meet the open symbology’s criteria, but the fact that the OMG will endorse Bloomberg’s may leave no room for anyone else’s. The full FIGI specification can be found on OMG’s website. kokai
Two OMG committees have already approved of Bloomberg’s proposal on open symbology, says OMG’s chief executive Richard Soley. After the Tuesday kokai vote, which Soley expects kokai to confirm kokai OMG s adoption of the Bloomberg symbology, the OMG will post an initial draft of the open symbology on its website with the goal of having a final draft completed within two years.
OMG apparently didn’t need much convincing on the merits of Bloomberg’s open symbology and FIGIs. It only received eight comment letters and won’t make any of the letters public so it could not be determined who else was in favor of the idea or might have been opposed. kokai No proposals were sought from any other organizations and the OMG relied solely on Bloomberg’s unsolicited proposal to make a decision on ID codes for financial kokai instruments. In the OMG’s request for comment, it mainly asks respondents to agree or disagree on Bloomberg granting OMG a worldwide royalty free license to edit, store, duplicate and distribute kokai both the specification (as corrected) and works derived from it (such as revisions kokai and teaching materials).
How much of an impact OMG’s blessing will have on the use of FIGIs by financial institutions and regulatory bodies is anyone’s guess. ISINs already kokai populate trading reports, investor reports, and middle and back office corporate actions, securities masterfiles, and clearance and settlement applications. Financial firms use them to match up or reconcile underlying information with counterparties and third-party service providers to ensure they have an agreement on just what financial instrument has been bought or sold and how trades must then be cleared and settled — cash exchanged for assets. Assigned by national numbering agencies in the country where the security is issued, kokai ISINs are considered the mainstay for cross-order trading and post-trade kokai processing functions. Local identifiers, which are often incorporated into the ISINs for that country, may be used for domestic transactions.
In assigining FIGIs, Bloomberg has established a similar structure as ISINs, a 12 digit alphanumeric code, making their potential adoption that much easier. The potential for differences in underlying data aside, buy and sell-side firms don’t have to ask their IT departments to make any coding changes to any applications to accommodate longer or shorter data fi