FIGI & OpenFIGI
FIGIs are Bloomberg open twelve-character identifiers, requestable at market and composite level through the free OpenFIGI API.
FIGI, the Financial Instrument Global Identifier, is the open contribution from Bloomberg to identifier fragmentation: a free, twelve-character identifier that anyone may use and redistribute. You request FIGIs and map your own symbology through the OpenFIGI portal and its rate-limited API, which returns FIGIs plus metadata under a permissive license. Bloomberg assigns FIGIs at several granularities: market-level FIGIs for individual exchange listings, a composite FIGI aggregating the instrument within its country of issuance, and a share-class FIGI linking listings across countries. Because a composite FIGI plus a MIC pins down exactly what traded where, FIGIs have become a default bridging key between vendor datasets and internal security masters.