US Securities - FAQs

If I have a large number of US securities, how can I receive them from a data feed?

The answer to this depends on which data feed is in use.

• Exshare feed. The Exshare feed from ICE Data Services (formerly Interactive Data) does not add US ISIN codes to your database or update them. There are two alternatives with the Exshare feed:
  • If you use SEDOL codes with the Exshare feed then SEDOLs for US securities are included. The London Stock Exchange for has high charges for using SEDOL codes. Documentation on these charges can be found at:  http://www.londonstockexchange.com/products-and-services/reference-data/sedol-master-file/documentation/documentation.htm. It is possible to convert from using SEDOL codes to ISIN codes and vice versa when the Exshare feed is in use. The option is found using QTRUMP32.EXE under Tools > Securities Parameters.
  • If you use ISIN codes with the Exshare feed then ISINs for US securities are not included. In this case, the feed provides an alternative "Common code" for US securities which is a nine-digit identification code issued jointly by CEDEL and Euroclear in Luxembourg. These codes are prefixed in Trust Accounts by "C*". So you might see a security with a code "C*123456789". The first file to contain this data was the February 2019 file. The band P file contained around 32,000 securities identified by Common codes, which is around a quarter of the full set of US ISINs, but at least this should cover the most important securities.
• Telekurs feed from SIX Financial uses a Valor code to represent all its US securities. These codes are prefixed in Trust Accounts by "V*". So you might see a security with a code "V*123456789". The data feed will continue to supply data on US securities. You could still face a problem in data entry when you receive a contract note or dividend advice that uses a US ISIN. You could search for the security by name, but if you need to be able to search by ISIN then you could subscribe to a service by which you could look up the ISIN and find the Valor code. SIX Financial offers the Valor Data Browser which does this and there may be other services.

If I have a feed of transactions from a broker that uses US ISINs, how can I import them into Trust Accounts?

• The broker may be able to provide a different code. For instance, a Swiss broker might be able to supply a Valor code.
• Otherwise the only solution is to manually create a spreadsheet that maps the US ISIN codes to the codes in use in Trust Accounts. You can then use this spreadsheet to map the codes in the brokers’ files to the Trust Accounts codes. But this solution does increase the time required to import data and you should check the licence terms on the CSG website.

What is the easiest way to search for a security by name?

On the Securities screen there is a Find button. There are several options here, but the most useful is:

• Quick (First word plus text search)

This option is used when the first word of the security name is known plus one or more other words. The search program will quickly return the matching securities. For instance, entering Fidelity Inc returns Fidelity Funds Income Units but does not return Professional Life Fidelity Inc Units. In the second case, Fidelity is present but is not the first word. This option is useful for searching for funds or gilts, e.g. Treasury 2018.

There are also options that search for any part of the security name, and even search through former names if the old name is available in Edit Security > Other > Name changes. But these options take longer to run, particularly on a C-Tree database. So the Quick option is the most popular.