The market data product that the global financial services industry really wants....

On a number of projects I have had to work with numerous datasets.  

As an example, for a client with a global trading business the requirement included:

• Bloomberg codes for FIX trading of futures
• RIC codes for FIX trading of equities
• ISIN codes for FIX trading of some participation notes
• ISIN codes for FIX trading of some Fixed Income instruments
• CUSIP codes for FIX trading of some Fixed Income instruments
• Synthetic instrument codes for some money market instruments

Positions were managed for some instruments using Sedol codes and for others ISINs.  And for money market instruments, synthetic identifiers.  A real mish-mash...

 

Some good collateral material can be found at the LSE and specifically ISIN/SEDOL/MIC/Country of Register linkages-HSBC - See image below

 

There is a good background piece on the ISIN vs Bloomberg Open Symbology initiative here.

 

The challenge is that when seeking to ensure that risk positions are managed correctly, there is usually a requirement for a cross reference table, such that there is a mapping

 

Bloomberg == RIC == Sedol + MIC == ISIN + MIC + Currency Code 

(and so on for every different symbology)

ISIN/SEDOL/MIC/Country of Register linkages-HSBC

For electronic trading this would be incredibly useful.  Especially if a vendor could offer an event driven feed of data such that futures and options expiry data changes were notified in a sensible way.

 

London is full of smart folks trying to offer the next big thing within fintech.  This data proposal is nowhere near as glamorous and would be a nightmare to negotiate - imagine trying to get Reuters and Bloomberg to play nicely together...

 

But think of the efficiency gains to everyone in the industry.  Not "yet another identifier scheme" but a grand business utility to organise and rationalise the existing data symbology.