RIC & Vendor Symbols
Vendor symbols like RICs and Bloomberg tickers are display conventions, not stable keys, so desks maintain explicit symbology maps.
Vendor symbols are the identifiers traders actually type. A Reuters Instrument Code appends an exchange suffix to a root, as in IBM.N for NYSE or VOD.L for London, while Bloomberg applies its own convention, such as VOD LN Equity. Neither is as stable or unique as an ISIN: roots change around corporate actions, suffixes differ between feeds, and the same security wears different roots on different terminals. LSEG PermID dampens the chaos with permanent identifiers lurking behind the display symbols. Every quant workflow that mixes vendor data needs a symbology mapping table, and curating it is the least glamorous yet most essential data job on the desk.