ABNT Launches Standard on Financial Instrument Global Identifier

The Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT), the country’s standardization body and member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), has launched the standard on the Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI), Bloomberg announced.

Published in Portuguese as ABNT NBR 16885:2020, the standard provides national guidelines for the registration of financial instruments. The methodology shows how to create a distinct 12-character, alphanumeric, randomly generated identification that is used globally to name hundreds of millions of active and inactive financial instruments.

The FIGI is an open data standard for identifying financial instruments across all global asset classes, including common stock, options, derivatives, futures, corporate and government bonds, currencies and mortgage products. Its name is individual and stays with the financial instrument through its lifetime of trading, settlement, portfolio management, asset servicing, risk management and regulatory reporting. This helps financial market participants, third-party data providers, exchanges, governments, settlement agencies and regulators improve connectivity, interoperability, transparency, and efficiency in the financial system. There are over 700 million FIGIs issued across asset classes globally.

“We are encouraging standards organizations around the world to follow ABNT’s leadership in adopting open standards for their individual national markets in order to further advance international, cross-border interoperability,” said Richard Robinson, Head of Data Strategy, Standards and Open Symbology at Bloomberg LP, which helped develop FIGI.

Geraldo Coelho, Latin America head of sales for Bloomberg, “We are delighted that ABNT has launched this standard. This ensures that financial instruments are distinct and secure, and ensures that the Brazilian financial market is in total synch with markets everywhere.”

The FIGI identifiers are available free of charge with no material impediments on use. The identifiers can be used for research, trading and mapping. Bloomberg, as the Certified Provider, will continuously build, update, and administer FIGI identifiers to ensure their accuracy and effectiveness.

Open FIGI is based on Bloomberg’s Open Symbology, released in 2009. In 2014, the international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium, Object Management Group voted unanimously to adopt it as a standard methodology for identifying financial instruments across all asset classes. The consortium also nominated Bloomberg to be the Registration Authority (RA) and a Certified Provider for the standard.

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