ECB CSDB Central Securities Database

The CSDB Central Securities Database is a service operated by the European Central Bank (ECB) and its 27 affilliated national central banks. It provides near comprehensive coverage of all securities (financial instruments such as equities, bonds, hybrid or structured products etc) which are either isuued by a European issuer or any of its subsidairies, or denominated in EUROS, or issued in a european country or any other security that is held by any european financial institution.

The CSDB also provides a reference model and data exchange standard which allows precise specifications of financial products and accurate reference and research information about financial product and oganisations to be exchanged between different organisations and systems with ambiguity or loss of information. The CSDB reference model and data exchange standard was designed by Marcelle von Wendland and implemented by Finsoft.

The CSDB is a vital service for the ECB and its affiliated national central banks who for instance use it to ensure that where information about securities is used in the producion of statistics such as balance of payments statistics it is of the best posiible quality.