[2] The Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) standard was given "approved status" by the Object Management Group (OMG) Architecture Board as of September 2015.

The FIGI is a 12-character alpha-numerical code that does not contain information characterizing financial instruments, but serves for uniform unique global identification.

[18] The permissible characters for use within a FIGI are a subset of ISO 8859-1 as follows: While the string itself is semantically meaningless, there is a specific structure that is used.

The syntax rules for the twelve characters are as follows: The purpose of the restriction is to reduce the chances that the resulting identifier may be identical to an ISIN string.

(Strictly speaking, a duplicate is not a problem as the strings designate different things, but care has been taken to reduce ambiguity.)

As we are using the letter "G" as our third character (see below), the only combinations that may come up within ISIN that only incorporates consonants are BSG (Bahamas), BMG (Bermuda), GGG (Guernsey), GBG (United Kingdom) and VGG (British Virgin Islands).

[16] Any interested parties may request access to the bulk and individual lookup facilities, regardless of any existing relationship with Bloomberg L.P. or lack thereof.

[20] FIGIs and the associated metadata defined in the standard are released free into the public domain with no commercial terms or restrictions on usage.