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The Financial Information Forum will fall in line with the Options Price Reporting Authority regarding the number of alphanumeric digits it will adopt as part of the options symbology initiative led by the Options Clearing Corp. The project is an attempt to create flexibility in labeling options contracts by increasing the number of characters allowed for identification codes from the current five digits. In comments it sent to the OCC during the comment period, the FIF said the initial proposal of a 21-digit code was more than they had hoped for. "We were hoping for shorter symboling and our recommendation was a variable length going from 13 to 16 bytes," said Manisha Kimmel, executive director of the FIF, noting that the reasoning for this suggested length is that older processing systems are typically limited to up to 16 digits.