Hello everyone. I started writing a comment in GitHub on Research global alignment of sector classifications · Issue #73 · opensanctions/rigour · GitHub but it got longer and longer and I thought it might better as a forum post.
There are multiple industry classification schemes in use in the UK. Some of them are proprietary and therefore of limited use to the open source movement. I have made notes on some of these below.
SIC codes
For the UK, the full Office for National Statistics hierarchy is here: UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Hierarchy
The condensed version used by Companies House (the UK company register) is here: Nature of business: Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes
The current UK SIC 2007 is identical down to the 4 digit level of NACE.
GICS
The London Stock Exchange makes use of GICS which was developed by MSCI and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) in the late 1990s: Global Industry Classification Standard System | Data Analytics
Pollution/emissions reporting
In the UK, NOSE-P codes, NACE codes and UK-PRTR codes are used in the context of emissions/pollution reporting: Reporting codes list: pollution inventory reporting - GOV.UK
The NOSE-P and UK-PRTR codes are really about classifying specific industrial activities rather than classifying companies but there is some overlap between those two things.
Business rates (a form of local taxation on business premises)
SCat codes are used to determine business rates on buildings: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6895f0a73080e72710b2e2e6/2025-08-08_Master_SCat_List.pdf
Libraries
Library classification systems also have to assign codes e.g. 622 in Dewey decimal is for ‘Mining and related operations’.
Challenges and limitations
NACE/SIC codes mainly focus on (legitimate) ‘for profit’ business activities carried out by private sector entities. This presents some challenges/issues:
- A large number of the organisations on OpenSanctions are public sector organisations. The public sector is essentially assigned a very small range in the SIC/NACE classification schemes which isn’t ideal because there will not be much differentiation.
- All supranational bodies fall under SIC code 99.0 (Activities of extraterritorial organisations and bodies). Again, this does not allow for much differentiation.
- There is very limited scope for differentiation for religious organisations, charities and not-for-profits. It would be good to distinguish between a religious charity, one that takes care of historical buildings and another that is funding medical research.
- There would be no distinction between a political party and a political campaigning group that does not put forward candidates for election.
- Arms dealers acting within the law would probably be classed as “Non-specialised wholesale trade” together with lots of businesses that are not arms dealers.
- There is no specific code for sovereign wealth funds but arguably that’s OK because ownership versus industrial activity are different concepts.
- SIC/NACE codes are designed for legitimate business activities and do not cover crime (even though the UK ONS does attempt to measure the value of crime to the UK economy for statistical purposes). OpenSanctions does of course list criminal groups. For some purposes, it would be helpful to distinguish between a terrorist group and an organised crime group engaged in fraud so we might want multiple codes for criminal activities as opposed to none at all.
There is also less differentiation for financial services that may be optimal for OpenSanctions.