Standard Financial Identifiers

The LEI is a globally unique identifier for legal entities. It was mandated by the G20 after the 2008 financial crisis to improve transparency in over-the-counter derivatives markets. Today it is required for trade reporting under MiFID II, EMIR, Dodd-Frank, and Basel III. The 20-character code encodes the issuing LOU (first 4 chars), entity-specific identifier (chars 5–18), and two check digits.

The GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation) maintains the global LEI registry as open data, including corporate hierarchy relationships (parent/child/ultimate parent). OreStudio imports this dataset to seed counterparties and, optionally, the party hierarchy during tenant provisioning.

The BIC uniquely identifies a financial institution in the SWIFT messaging network. It encodes institution code (4 chars), country (2 chars), location (2 chars), and optional branch (3 chars). BICs are used in SWIFT MT messages and ISO 20022 MX messages for payment routing and settlement instructions. GLEIF publishes a LEI-to-BIC mapping dataset that allows counterparty BICs to be resolved from their LEIs; OreStudio imports this mapping.

The CIK is the SEC's internal identifier for all EDGAR filers — public companies, fund managers, and individuals required to file disclosures. Used when cross-referencing OreStudio counterparty records with US regulatory filings.

The ISIN is the globally accepted primary identifier for securities and the one required by most regulatory reporting frameworks (MiFID II RTS 2, EMIR). It maps to the underlying national identifier (CUSIP for US, SEDOL for UK, etc.) via the issuing NNA. Securities issued into the international market through Euroclear or Clearstream carry the prefix XS, which belongs to no single country.

An ISIN identifies the security and not the listing. The same ISIN appears on every venue where the security trades, so an ISIN alone cannot say which venue a price came from; the market data identifiers below answer that.

Issuers re-open existing lines rather than always creating new ones, and a re-opened tranche carries the ISIN of the line it joins. An ISIN therefore identifies a security rather than a single sale event. See Bond issuance.

In ORE Studio an ISIN identifies a security issue, which is one of the four entities in trade modeling. It does not identify a trade: that is the trade id, with trade identifiers covering the regulatory codes two counterparties share. ORE names a security issue through ReferenceData, and a bond trade points at its datum with BondData/SecurityId.

CUSIP is the dominant identifier for North American securities. The first 6 characters identify the issuer; the next 2 characters identify the specific issue (equity class, bond maturity, etc.). An ISIN for a US security is US + CUSIP + check digit.

SEDOL is the primary identifier for securities listed on UK and Irish exchanges. It is widely used in European fund administration and is embedded in the ISIN for UK securities (GB + SEDOL-derived).

Unlike an ISIN, a SEDOL is assigned per listing rather than per security, so one security listed on several venues has several SEDOLs.

FIGI (formerly Bloomberg Global Identifier / BBGID) is an open, freely available identifier for financial instruments, including OTC derivatives that have no ISIN. Unlike CUSIP and SEDOL, the FIGI registry is public and downloadable. Each unique combination of instrument, exchange, and currency gets a distinct FIGI. The GLEIF DQ pipeline maps LEIs to FIGIs for OTC instrument identification.

The data quality coding scheme table registers the identifiers on a party: LEI, BIC, MIC, MPID, DTCC_PARTICIPANT_ID and NATIONAL_ID. The instrument schemes on this page have no equivalent entry, so a security identifier is currently stored without a registered scheme saying which authority issued it.

The MIC identifies a regulated exchange, trading platform, or systematic internaliser. MICs appear in trade reports (MiFID II transaction reporting requires the MIC of the execution venue), in ISIN suffixes, and in order routing instructions. OreStudio uses MICs when recording the execution venue of equity and listed derivative trades.

The RIC is the primary instrument identifier on Refinitiv (LSEG) data terminals and APIs. It encodes both the instrument and the market/contributor. OreStudio uses RICs in market data configurations that pull from Refinitiv feeds, and in fixing workflows where a Reuters rate is the authoritative source.

The Bloomberg ticker plus Yellow Key (asset class) uniquely identifies an instrument on the Bloomberg Terminal. OreStudio market data configurations that consume Bloomberg data reference instruments by their BBG ticker. Bloomberg also issues FIGIs (see above) as its open-standard equivalent.