Covering the entire spectrum of asset classes and financial services, from loans and credit cards to derivatives and bond positions, a Universal Product Identifier (UPI) will enable a holistic approach to identifying all trades and positions, including capital calculations, reporting, clearing mandates and booking rules. While such an idea sounds great in theory, historical attempts at achieving global agreement have fallen short, even within a subsector of the industry. Peter Meechan, Jim Bennett and Pauline Tykochinsky examine the feasibility of universal product codes, ponder whether the industry is ready to come together to create them, and discuss what a potential [...]