CUSIP Global Services has announced the renewal of the accreditation of the CUSIP identifier as the American national standard for unique securities identification.
The five-year accreditation was issued by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a private, non-profit organisation that administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standards and conformity assessment system, through its Accredited Standards Committee X9 (X9).
The CUSIP is a nine-character alphanumeric security identifier that captures the unique attributes of issuers and their financial instruments throughout the US and Canada. For over five decades, the CUSIP system has been widely recognised as the standard identifier for US securities. The ANSI accreditation certifies that the CUSIP identifier will remain the established, universally recognised standard for unique security identification in the Americas. To date, more than 62.8 million CUSIP identifiers have been assigned to financial instruments, irrespective of trading venue, across a broad range of asset classes – at least 9.4 million of which are active today.
“We are pleased to receive this renewal of our accreditation, which recognises the critical role the CUSIP identifier continues to play in financial markets,” says Scott Preiss, Managing Director and Global Head of CUSIP Global Services. “We see it as our responsibility to the marketplace to maintain the world’s most reliable, accessible and transparent security and entity identification standards that improve the efficiency and accuracy of trading, trade processing, settlement, risk management and record-keeping in global financial markets. This recognition by ANSI and X9 is a welcome affirmation of that mission and a testament to our sustained investment in the CUSIP system.”
The CUSIP system, which was widely embraced by the market before it first received ANSI accreditation, was launched in 1968 by the American Bankers Association to help improve operating efficiencies across the industry by developing a standard method of identifying securities. Since that time, the CUSIP identifier has been relied upon to provide universally recognised identifiers for financial instruments issued by corporations, municipalities and government agencies around the world.
“This latest renewal of the CUSIP accreditation as the country’s established standard for unique security identification reflects the tremendous effort and significant investment CUSIP Global Services puts into managing the CUSIP system day in and day out,” says Rob Nichols, ABA president and CEO. “CUSIP’s strong commitment to investment and innovation has cemented its standing as the industry’s most efficient security identifier for more than 50 years, and will help it retain that role well into the future. CUSIP is central to the efficient operation of our financial markets and we are proud to be a part of this historic industry-wide initiative.”
“The CUSIP system is recognised as the trusted beacon of efficiency and transparency in US financial markets,” says Ann Marie Bria, Executive Director, Asset Services at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). “Having this common, standardised language makes it possible for market participants around the world to execute, process and settle trades with increased confidence and consistency.”
