CCH Audit Automation

Restriction of SEDOL lookup facility

SecTAX can use either SEDOL or ISIN codes to identify securities. Most users use ISIN codes as the use of SEDOL codes has been chargeable by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) since 2004. The LSE charges are high and are documented here:

https://www.lseg.com/markets-products-and-services/post-trade-services/unavista/unavista-solutions/data-solutions/sedol/documentation

Although most users use ISIN codes, many contract notes and dividend schedules use SEDOL codes. To help users with these codes, CCH wrote a SEDOL lookup facility which worked as follows. The user goes into Securities > Find, selects SEDOL, enters a SEDOL code and clicks Find. The system communicates with a CCH web service which looks up the SEDOL and returns the ISIN code. The user then clicks Find a second time and the ISIN code is hopefully found on the user’s database.

Unfortunately this no longer complies with the LSE’s 2021 guidelines. If we continued with it, every ISIN code user would probably become liable for the LSE’s SEDOL code charges. This is documented in “SEDOL Masterfile Pricing and Policy 2021 Guidelines” on the above link. For instance, it states:

“Third Party Application: Example 1

• Customer stores 7 000 unique SEDOL codes within its in house system.
• Customer also subscribes to a data mapping facility in a third party application containing over 20000 SEDOL codes
• The Licensable Event is based on all SEDOL codes that may be accessible or are accessed via the 3rd party mapping facility
• The correct count for licence purposes is 20000 regardless of how many are extracted or downloaded”

We have therefore updated the SEDOL lookup facility and restricted what it can do.

The new system still allows you to enter a SEDOL code in Security > Find. However it will now only find UK and Irish SEDOLs. This is because UK and Irish ISIN codes contain the SEDOL code in their middle digits. When you search for a SEDOL, the system now converts it into a GB ISIN code and looks that up, e.g. SEDOL 0136701 for British Land 25p shares is converted into GB0001367019. If it’s found then that’s your security. Otherwise it tries converting it into an IE ISIN and looks that up on your database. The web service is no longer used and the actual SEDOL code is never looked up at all.

So UK and Irish SEDOLs can still be looked up if the ISIN is present on the SecTAX database but foreign ISINs cannot. When you come across foreign SEDOLs, you may need to Google them or ask the broker for the ISIN code.

ITS/59426 – When auto-posting an Interest payment made gross, the system sometimes warned about a missing tax rate

If the entry is dated after 05/04/2016 it should not give this warning.

ITS/61663 – Income / acquisition schedule was not showing the security code on foreign income

It has now been added.

ITS/59465 - Autopost - Accumulation unit gives error "Illegal argument to function"