ISO country codes

• Question ID: 2017/0004
• Date of publication: 09/08/2017
• Subject matter: ISO and other standardised code lists
• AnaCredit Manual: Centralised code lists
• Data attribute: Address: country, Real estate collateral location

Question

In accordance with the ISO 3166 standard – codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – the United States of America includes one district, 50 states and six outlying areas. As regards the six outlying areas, they all have separate country code entries in the standard. For example, Puerto Rico, which is an outlying area of the United States, has the country code “PR”. Could you please confirm that the separate country code in the ISO 3166 standard is reported for counterparties established in any of the six outlying areas, rather than the country code of the United States?

Answer

The AnaCredit Regulation stipulates that the counterparty’s country is reported as an ISO 3166 alpha-2 code. ISO 3166 is the international standard for country codes and the codes of their subdivisions. The standard is intended for use in any application requiring the expression of current country names in coded form. An alpha-2 code is a two-letter code that represents a country name.

It is clarified that for counterparties located in a country that has a specific, separate alpha-2 code in the ISO 3166 standard, the specific two-letter code of the country is reported. This also applies to cases where the country is a subdivision of another country.

This means that for a counterparty located in Puerto Rico, for example, the data attribute “address: country” is reported as “PR”.