The FIGI, short for Financial Instrument Global Identifier, is a 12-character alphanumeric code used to identify financial instruments. It covers shares, bonds, funds, futures, options, indices, currencies, loans and crypto-assets, and it is issued free of charge under an open licence, so that anyone can use, store and redistribute the codes without paying fees. A FIGI is assigned once and does not change during the life of the instrument, and it is never reused.
The FIGI is one of several instrument identifiers in use, alongside the ISIN, CUSIP and SEDOL. It identifies instruments, not organisations, which are identified by the LEI. Its main distinguishing features are its open licence, its wide asset coverage and its ability to identify an instrument separately on each exchange where it trades.
History and governance
The identifier began as a proprietary code used inside Bloomberg's data systems, known as the Bloomberg Global Identifier. Bloomberg made the codes openly available in 2009, and in 2014 the scheme was adopted as a standard by the Object Management Group, an international technology standards body, under its present name. The Object Management Group owns the standard; Bloomberg acts as its registration authority and as a certified provider that issues codes. Other organisations can also be approved as certified providers, and a crypto data company has been approved for digital assets.
In the United States, the national standards committee for financial services accepted the FIGI as an American national standard in 2021. Codes and their associated descriptive data can be looked up and mapped to other identifiers through a free public website and programming interface called OpenFIGI.
Structure of the code
The twelve characters follow a fixed pattern.
- Characters 1 and 2. Two upper-case consonants that indicate the certified provider that issued the code. Codes issued by Bloomberg begin with BB. Certain pairs that could be confused with ISIN country codes are not allowed.
- Character 3. The letter G, for global.
- Characters 4 to 11. Eight characters made up of digits and upper-case consonants. Vowels are never used, which prevents codes from accidentally spelling words.
- Character 12. A check digit calculated from the preceding characters, used to detect errors.
Unlike an ISIN or CUSIP, the characters carry no meaning about the issuer, the country or the type of instrument. All descriptive information is held in the data record linked to the code.
Three levels of identification
A share listed on several exchanges has one ISIN but trades in different currencies, on different venues and with different liquidity. The FIGI scheme addresses this with a hierarchy.
- Venue-level FIGI. Identifies the instrument on one specific trading venue.
- Composite FIGI. Groups all the venue-level codes for the instrument within one country.
- Share class FIGI. Groups all composites worldwide for the same class of share.
This structure lets systems choose the level of detail they need: a trading system can refer to the exact listing, while a risk or holdings report can aggregate at share class level. Instruments that trade over the counter and have no venue receive a single code.
Comparison with other identifiers
The ISIN is the international standard recognised by most regulators and is required in many reports, including European trade reporting. It is issued by national numbering agencies, and in North America it is built on the CUSIP, whose bulk use requires a paid licence. An ISIN or CUSIP may change after a corporate action such as a name change or reorganisation, whereas a FIGI stays the same unless the instrument itself is replaced. ISIN coverage is also thinner for some instruments, such as syndicated loans, listed derivatives and crypto-assets, where the FIGI is often available. A ticker symbol, by contrast, is assigned by an exchange, is unique only on that venue and can be reassigned.
In practice firms do not choose one identifier. A security master file stores several for each instrument and maps between them, and the FIGI is frequently used as a neutral internal key within instrument reference data because it is stable and free to share with counterparties and vendors. Mapping rules are part of reference data governance.
Regulatory use and debate
Regulators have gradually admitted the FIGI alongside established codes. The Securities and Exchange Commission allows it to be reported in addition to the CUSIP in institutional holdings filings. In 2024, United States financial regulators proposed joint data standards that named the FIGI as a common instrument identifier for regulatory reporting, which drew strong objections from supporters of the CUSIP and ISIN. The final rule, issued in 2026, left the FIGI out and set no common instrument identifier.
Critics of wider adoption argue that the FIGI is not an international standard of the International Organization for Standardization, that it does not always correspond one-to-one with the legally defined security because of its venue-level detail, and that changing identifiers across the industry's systems would be costly. They also note the central role of a single commercial company in issuing codes. Supporters reply that the open licence removes a recurring cost, that the governance sits with an independent standards body, and that open identifiers improve transparency and competition in market data. The debate mirrors a wider discussion about whether identifiers embedded in regulation should be public goods.