The Financial Instrument Global Identifier, widely known as FIGI, is a globally recognized standard for identifying financial instruments. Established by the Object Management Group (OMG), a non-profit international standards consortium founded in 1989, FIGI serves as a universal language for the financial world. Imagine needing a single ID to clearly pinpoint any financial instrument across the globe – that’s the role of FIGI. This 12-character, alphanumeric identifier is randomly generated and covers an extensive range of instruments, both active and inactive, with a staggering capacity of over 300 trillion potential identifiers.
Think of FIGI as a digital address, a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), leading you to a comprehensive set of metadata. This metadata provides a unique and unambiguous description of the financial instrument it represents. This system was deliberately designed with a random sequence to ensure each symbol is unique and unchanging, directly addressing the needs expressed by numerous clients in the financial industry.
FIGI effectively bridges the gaps present in existing symbology systems. By offering comprehensive coverage across all global asset classes, ensuring real-time availability, and providing the flexibility needed for diverse applications, FIGI empowers firms to consolidate disparate and fragmented symbologies. This consolidation streamlines trade workflows, eliminates redundant mapping processes, and significantly reduces operational risks. Furthermore, FIGI extends its utility to asset classes that traditionally lack a global identifier, such as loans, cryptocurrencies, exchange-traded pairs, futures, and options.
This diagram illustrates the comprehensive coverage and application of the FIGI system across various financial operations.
Why is FIGI Important?
Permanent Identification
Once a FIGI is assigned to a financial instrument, it remains constant throughout the entire trade lifecycle. Even if the instrument ceases to exist, its FIGI is retired and never reused, ensuring a permanent and historical record. This permanence is crucial for maintaining data integrity and historical analysis.
Semantically Meaningless Structure
The FIGI code itself is designed to be semantically meaningless. It does not inherently carry any information about the instrument or its issuer. Instead, all meaningful data is captured in the associated metadata. This metadata is designed to be both extensible and adaptable, allowing for rich and evolving descriptions of financial instruments without altering the core identifier.
Contextual and Self-Referencing Framework
The FIGI framework establishes intricate relationships between different functional contexts of the same instrument and their associated metadata. This contextual awareness ensures consistent data quality across various use cases. For example, it can differentiate between a single obligation and the same obligation listed on multiple exchanges, or accommodate varying regulatory reporting requirements across different marketplaces. This self-referencing capability provides a robust and adaptable system for managing complex financial data.
Open Governance
FIGI is built upon the principle of being an “OPEN” data standard. It stands as the first and only open data standard dedicated to the unique identification of financial instruments. This openness aligns with the core tenets of the open-source movement, advocating for data that is freely available for anyone to use, reuse, and redistribute. This commitment to open data ensures broad accessibility and fosters innovation within the financial industry.
Decoding the FIGI Structure
The structure of a FIGI is carefully designed to ensure uniqueness and standardization across the financial ecosystem.
Characters 1-2: These initial characters designate the Certified Provider responsible for issuing or “minting” the FIGI. This ensures accountability and traceability within the system.
Character 3: This character is always ‘G’, serving as a constant marker to definitively identify it as a Global Identifier within the FIGI framework.
Characters 4-11: These eight characters are randomly assigned alphanumeric values, excluding vowels, to create the unique reference ID for the associated metadata set. This random generation ensures the vast number of potential identifiers and minimizes the chance of collisions.
Character 12: The final character is a check digit. It is calculated using the Modulus 10 Double Add Double technique and is applied to every FIGI number. This check digit acts as an error detection mechanism, enhancing the integrity and reliability of the FIGI.
Open Symbology Explained
Symbology in finance is more than just codes; it’s a comprehensive methodology that encompasses metadata, relationships within datasets, and interoperability. FIGI embodies this broader definition by being the pioneering open data standard for financial instrument identification. Open data, at its heart, is about freedom – the freedom to use, reuse, and share information, often with minimal attribution requirements.
FIGI, as a standard of the Object Management Group (OMG), incorporates the MIT Open Source declaration, solidifying its status as Open Data in perpetuity. Bloomberg, serving as the Registration Authority, upholds these open principles for the collective benefit of the financial community, ensuring FIGI remains a publicly accessible and beneficial resource.
Still Curious About FIGI?
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