Activities and functions

In its capacity as Spain´s National Numbering Agency (ANCV: Agencia Nacional de Codificación de Valores), the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores´s goal is to identify all Spanish securities and financial instruments with an international code (ISIN : International Securities Identification Number) and to make those codes available to users so that they may be used in systems for settling securities trades and, generally, in all back-office processes.

Whereas the ANCV assigns codes only to Spanish issues, the only ones under its responsibility, it also acts as a point of access to all the securities codes assigned worldwide. To that end, the ANCV is constantly in contact with all the officially-established National Numbering Agencies and exchanges information about issues with them so that Spanish users can have identification information about both domestic and foreign securities.

The ANCV is governed by two items of legislation that date from 2010:

• Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores Circular 2/2010, of 28 July, on securities and other instruments of a financial nature that may be numbered and the procedures for numbering.
• Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores Technical Standard 1/2010, of 28 July, in connection with its functions of numbering tradeable instruments and other financial instruments, regarding the structure of codes.

The ANCV is a full member of the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and is linked to the ANNA Service Bureau, a service created by ANNA to enable National Numbering Agencies and other users to access information on all ISIN codes assigned worldwide. The ANCV participates actively in ANNA´s work to harmonise financial instrument numbering practices in the various countries, and it is a member of many of ANNA´s working groups.

The ANCV has the following functions:

• Allocating ISIN codes to Spanish securities and financial instruments that are susceptible to numbering, in accordance with the CNMV Circular on numbering.
• Maintaining a data base with all the securities numbered by the ANCV which contains sufficient information on the characteristics of each issue so as to be able to provide users with the basic essential data to identify an issue in accordance with the standards established by ANNA.
• Attending free of charge the specific queries¹ that any user requires on a Spanish or foreign ISIN code. Such queries can be made:
  • By contacting the public information service of the Agencia Nacional de Codificación de Valores:
    • Telephone: 00 34 91 585 15 00
    • E-mail: ancv@cnmv.es
    • Adress:
      • Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores
      • Agencia Nacional de Codificación de Valores
      • Edison, 4
      • 28006 Madrid
  • Through the ISIN lookup on this server.
  • By downloading the half-yearly publication available on the CNMV website that lists all the ISINs of securities traded on Spain´s official markets and mutual funds.
• Disseminating the codes assigned by the ANCV among users. Several dissemination channels are used:
  • A daily feed of updates to the ANCV data base, aimed at professional providers of financial information.
  • By means of the ISIN queries to this server.
  • Half-yearly publication available on the CNMV website containing all the securities traded on Spain´s official markets and mutual funds.
  • Through the Derivatives Web Service which allows users to access to a limited number of ISIN codes.
• Allocating CFI (Classification of Financial Instruments) to enable securities and financial instruments to be classified automatically.
• Assigning the financial instrument short name for all securities and financial instruments under the scope of the ANCV.

(1) Requests of listings of ISIN codes allocated by the ANCV will be made through the CNMV General Secretariat, which will provide an estimate of the cost of their preparation.