Standards
The identifier standards of global finance, and the open Finance Foundation Schema for entities and relationships.
Identifiers — the four questions
Every financial fact needs four resolutions: who (entity), what (security), where (venue) and in what unit (currency). These are the standards that answer them.
| Code | Standard | Answers | Steward |
|---|---|---|---|
| LEI | Legal Entity Identifier20-char code identifying any legal entity party to a financial transaction. Free and open by G20 mandate. | Who — the legal entity | GLEIF (open, ISO 17442) |
| ISIN | International Securities Identification Number12-char code identifying a security across venues. Openly usable; allocation is per-country. | What — the security | ISO 6166 via national agencies |
| MIC | Market Identifier Code4-char code identifying exchanges and trading venues (XNYS, XNAS, XLON…). | Where — the venue | ISO 10383 (open registry) |
| FIGI | Financial Instrument Global IdentifierOpen, free alternative to licensed instrument codes; mappable via the OpenFIGI API. | What+where — instrument at venue | OMG / OpenFIGI (open) |
| Ticker | Exchange ticker symbolVenue-local and ambiguous across markets — convenient for humans, unsafe as a primary key. | Local shorthand | Each venue |
| ISO 4217 | Currency codesUSD, EUR, JPY… the one identifier layer finance fully agrees on. | Unit of account | ISO (open) |
Finance Foundation Schema v0.1
A minimal, open schema for financial entities and their relationships — the shape this site and its API are built on. Machine-readable at /api/v1/schema. Published under CC BY 4.0.
Entity types
| Entity | Fields | External identifiers |
|---|---|---|
| Company | id, name, legal_name, ticker, exchange, country, sector, industry, market_cap_usd_bn, currency, website, founded, description | ticker, LEI (planned), ISIN (planned) |
| Market | id, mic, name, country, type, currency, timezone, operator, note | mic |
| Asset | id, name, symbol, type, category, currency, market, issuer, description | symbol |
| Fund | id, name, symbol, type, manager, strategy, country, aum_usd_bn, description | symbol |
| Bank | id, name, company, country, type, gsib, total_assets_usd_tn, description | — |
| Country | id, code, name, currency, gdp_usd_tn, central_bank, markets | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 |
| Indicator | id, name, unit, frequency, sources, description | — |
Relationship types
| Relationship | Direction | Note |
|---|---|---|
| lists_on | Company → Market | primary listing venue |
| domiciled_in | Company → Country | country of incorporation / HQ |
| located_in | Market → Country | |
| managed_by | Fund → Company | where the manager is a covered listed company |
| domiciled_in | Fund → Country | |
| operated_by | Bank → Company | where the bank is a covered listed company |
| chartered_in | Bank → Country | |
| denominated_in | Asset → Currency |
Classifications
Sectors
Finance Foundation uses an 11-sector taxonomy aligned with common market practice (GICS/ICB are the licensed industry standards; our taxonomy is open and mappable to both): Technology, Financials, Healthcare, Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Energy, Industrials, Materials, Communication Services, Utilities, Real Estate.
Asset classes
Assets are typed as Equity Index, Government Bond, Currency, Commodity, or Crypto, with a free-form category beneath (e.g. Crypto → Stablecoin). Typed assets keep filters and agent queries unambiguous.