OMG Adopts FIGI Identifier Standard

Technology standards consortium the Object Management Group (OMG) has officially adopted the Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI).  

The FIGI initiative is backed by Bloomberg and is based on the company's Open Symbology system, developed for identifying securities across all global asset classes. However, the FIGI is non-proprietary, is issued under an MIT License and is intended to be used free of charge by data and software vendors, exchanges, regulators and market participants.

"The OMG recently released the FIGI as an industry standard for use by industry practitioners in the capital markets, which lacks a universal system for identifying and describing financial instruments," says Richard Soley, chairman and CEO of OMG.

"A game-changing standard, the FIGI ties together disparate and fragmented symbologies, eliminates redundant mapping processes, streamlines the trade workflow and reduces operational risk."

A press release adds that the FIGI has been added to the extended code set for ISO 20022 messages, and can therefore be used for instrument identification in all ISO 20022 messaging, including over the Swift network.