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CUSIP Global Services (CGS), managed by Standard & Poor’s on behalf of the American Bankers Association, today announced that FOW TRADEdata, a United Kingdom-based financial information provider specializing in futures and options products, will aid in the development of a CUSIP identification system for listed equity options in the U.S.
CGS plans to launch its CUSIP Options Service by the end of June, at which time there will be approximately one million option CUSIPs with accompanying ISINs and related data elements. Market participants who wish to receive the CUSIP Options Service will be able to do so directly from CGS or via a properly licensed vendor. FOW TRADEdata’s Xymbology product, which maps option contracts to market data and proprietary vendor codes, will also contain option CUSIPs and ISINs.
Once operational, the CUSIP Options Service will generate a 9-character CUSIP and 12-character ISIN for each contract strike price. FOW TRADEdata will be the source of the contract data and it will cover all the major options exchanges in the U.S. The CUSIP Options Service will contain unique identifiers that will not conflict with other CUSIPs. Moreover, the use of the letter C (call) and P (put) in the third position of the CUSIP will be reserved for Options CUSIPs.
"CUSIP Global Services (CGS) is pleased to work with FOW TRADEdata to expand our asset class coverage, and more importantly, to address a long-standing industry need,” said Matthew Bastian, Director, Product Development at Standard & Poor’s. “The Options Service represents another leap ahead for CGS in its mission to help market participants uniquely identify financial instruments.
To both collect feedback and to keep market participants apprised of this development, CGS outlined its plans for a CUSIP Options Service before several industry groups in the last year, including the Financial Information Forum (FIF) and the SIFMA Operations Committee, as well as the CUSIP Agency Board of Trustees.
“The feedback we have received from the industry is that a common nine to twelve character identifier is a tremendous step forward in standardization, and is an essential complement to the OCC’s planned 21-character OSI code,” continued Bastian.
For more information about the CUSIP Options Service, please visit www.cusip.com.
