Default Securities Classifications

An Asset Class is a grouping of comparable financial securities. Historically, there have been three primary asset classes:

• Equities (stocks)
• Fixed income (bonds)
• Cash equivalents or money market instruments

Currently, most investment professionals also include real estate, commodities, futures, other financial derivatives, and even cryptocurrencies in their asset class considerations.

BridgeFT receives basic securities data from custodians including its classifications. This provided asset classification is static and cannot be updated. You can access information about any security and its classification using our Securities API. In this API, the master_asset_class field represents the initial classification based on the source data.

The Securities API provides various endpoints to retrieve comprehensive asset information including classifications:

Below are the default (master) asset class values returned as part of the response:

This classification is determined based on the source custodial data. When the data is insufficient or when classification is not provided by the custodian, we set the value to "Other".

Custom Asset Classifications

BridgeFT offers the capability to apply custom asset classifications alongside the default (master) security classification. This is particularly valuable in scenarios where the default classification is missing or for enhanced reporting flexibility.

Please be aware that Custom Asset Classification does not modify the security record itself since the master_asset_class is received from the custodian.

To manage custom asset class assignments, you can utilize the Asset Classification API. Below is a list of endpoints related to this functionality:

Modifying the default asset classification involves two steps:

1. Creating a classification tag using the Classification Tags API.
2. Assigning this tag to the security using the Asset Classification API.

Let's explore the details of this process!

Step 1. Creating a Classification Tag

Classification Tags are the custom asset classes you want to define. For instance, if you wish to classify the stocks they manage as "Tech Stock", a classification tag should be created with that description.

Request Example

curl --request POST \
     --url 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/reporting/class-tags' \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer {YOUR_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "firm_id": <YOUR_FIRM_ID>,
  "name": "Tech Stock"
}'

Response

{
  "id": 188,
  "name": "Tech Stock",
  "firm_id": <YOUR_FIRM_ID>,
  "object": "reporting.class_tag",
  "created_at_utc": "2017-12-27T16:47:11.253166Z",
  "updated_at_utc": "2022-02-19T15:09:14.621871Z"
}

Step 2. Creating an Asset Classification

Once a classification tag is created, it can be assigned to securities to establish the custom asset classification.

For example, by default, Apple (AAPL) is defined with a master_asset_class = EQ (Equity) as provided by the custodian.

A retrieved AAPL security record from the Securities API looks like this:

{
  "id": 62,
  "symbol": "AAPL",
  "description": "Apple Inc",
  "master_asset_class": "EQ",
  "broad_code": 2,
  "identifier": "AAPL",
  "issue_type": "COMMON STOCKS",
  "issue_type_code": 28,
  "prefixed_identifier": "S:AAPL",
  "sic_code": 800,
  "object": "data.custodian.security",
  "created_at_utc": "2018-01-27T12:56:28.742126Z",
  "updated_at_utc": "2021-03-17T08:54:57.433127Z"
}

To assign the created "Tech Stock" tag to this security, create a new asset classification by sending the following request:

curl --request POST \
     --url 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/reporting/asset-classifications' \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer {YOUR_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "security_id": 62,
  "class_tag_id": 188
  "firm_id": <YOUR_FIRM_ID>
}'

This will return a success message along with the created asset classification:

{
  "id": 42784,
  "class_tag_id": 188,
  "firm_id": <YOUR_FIRM_ID>,
  "security_id": 62,
  "object": "reporting.asset_classification",
  "created_at_utc": "2022-02-19T15:09:14.621871Z",
  "updated_at_utc": "2022-02-19T15:09:14.621871Z"
}

The asset classification links the classification tag created to the specified security. Classification tags can be associated with multiple securities, but a security can only have a single custom asset classification at a time. Thus if you create another asset classification, let's say, in our example, assigning "ESG" tag to the AAPL security, then the latest tag ("ESG") will override the previous one ("Tech").

Custom asset classifications are not included in the Securities API response. To display this information in your application, please use the Asset Classification API in addition to the Securities API.