VALOR Validation in Python

1. What is a VALOR?

A VALOR (Valorennummer — also written Valoren number or simply Valor) is the numeric identifier used to identify securities in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Issued by SIX Financial Information (SIX Group, Zurich), VALORs appear in Swiss brokerage confirmations, bank statements, portfolio reports, and financial data feeds from SIX.

While ISIN has become the standard for cross-border and regulatory reporting, VALORs remain pervasive in Swiss private banking and asset management. Many Swiss brokers, custodians, and fund administrators expose VALORs as the primary identifier alongside ISINs — and some legacy systems expose VALORs only.

Unlike WKN (Germany), the VALOR is purely numeric — it contains only digits, never letters. Like WKN and unlike ISIN or SEDOL, the VALOR has no check digit. Confirming a VALOR requires a database lookup.

2. VALOR anatomy

A VALOR is between 5 and 9 digits long, using only decimal digits:

Some well-known examples:

3. VALOR inside a Swiss ISIN

Swiss ISINs embed the VALOR in a predictable way. The NSIN (National Securities Identifying Number) portion of a CH or LI ISIN is the VALOR zero-padded on the left to 9 characters:

# Extracting VALOR from a Swiss ISIN
isin = "CH0012138530"

country = isin[:2]   # "CH"
nsin    = isin[2:11] # "001213853"
check   = isin[11]   # "0"

# The VALOR is the NSIN with leading zeros stripped
valor = nsin.lstrip("0")  # "1213853"

print(valor)  # → 1213853

4. Why format checks are not enough

5. The right solution: one API call

The IsValid VALOR API combines format validation and live OpenFIGI enrichment in a single GET /v0/valor request.

Get your free API key at isvalid.dev.

Full parameter reference and response schema: VALOR Validation API docs →

6. Python code example

Using the isvalid-sdk package or the requests library directly.

# valor_validator.py
import os
from isvalid_sdk import IsValid

iv = IsValid(api_key=os.environ["ISVALID_API_KEY"])

# ── Example usage ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

result = iv.valor("1213853")  # UBS Group AG

if not result["valid"]:
    print("Invalid VALOR: must be 5–9 digits (no letters)")
else:
    print(f"VALOR       : {result['valor']}")
    if result.get("found"):
        print(f"Name        : {result.get('name')}")
        print(f"ISIN        : {result.get('isin')}")
        print(f"Ticker      : {result.get('ticker')}")
        print(f"Exchange    : {result.get('exchCode')}")
        print(f"FIGI        : {result.get('figi')}")
        print(f"Sector      : {result.get('marketSector')}")

Expected output for 1213853:

VALOR       : 1213853
Name        : UBS Group AG
ISIN        : CH0012138530
Ticker      : UBSG
Exchange    : SE
FIGI        : BBG000BVD464
Sector      : Equity

# router.py (FastAPI)
from fastapi import APIRouter, HTTPException
import requests, os

router = APIRouter()
API_KEY = os.environ["ISVALID_API_KEY"]


@router.get("/securities/validate-valor")
def validate_valor_endpoint(valor: str):
    if not valor:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=400, detail="Missing valor parameter")

    try:
        resp = requests.get(
            "https://api.isvalid.dev/v0/valor",
            params={"value": valor},
            headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"},
            timeout=10,
        )
        resp.raise_for_status()
        result = resp.json()
    except requests.RequestException:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=502, detail="VALOR validation service unavailable")

    if not result["valid"]:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=400, detail=f"Invalid VALOR: {valor}")

    return {
        "valor": result["valor"],
        "found": result.get("found"),
        "isin": result.get("isin"),
        "name": result.get("name"),
        "ticker": result.get("ticker"),
        "exchCode": result.get("exchCode"),
        "figi": result.get("figi"),
    }

7. cURL example

UBS Group AG:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.isvalid.dev/v0/valor?value=1213853"

Novartis AG:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.isvalid.dev/v0/valor?value=1200526"

Invalid format — fewer than 5 digits:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.isvalid.dev/v0/valor?value=1234"

8. Understanding the response

Response for a valid VALOR found in OpenFIGI:

{
  "valid": true,
  "valor": "1213853",
  "found": true,
  "dataSource": "openfigi",
  "isin": "CH0012138530",
  "name": "UBS Group AG",
  "ticker": "UBSG",
  "exchCode": "SE",
  "securityType": "Common Stock",
  "marketSector": "Equity",
  "figi": "BBG000BVD464",
  "compositeFIGI": "BBG000BVD464"
}

Response for an invalid VALOR:

{
  "valid": false
}

9. Edge cases to handle

10. Summary

• ISIN validation — ISINs embed VALORs for CH/LI-prefixed codes
• WKN validation — the German equivalent (alphanumeric)
• SEDOL validation — the UK equivalent
• CUSIP validation — the North American equivalent
• VALOR Validation in Node.js

Python integration notes

Use Pydantic V2's @field_validator or the Annotated + AfterValidator pattern to embed VALOR validation in your data models. The validator calls the IsValid API and raises a ValueError if valid is False. Because there is no check digit to compute locally, the API call is the only meaningful validation step — format-only regex checks provide little protection against real-world errors.

• Store ISVALID_API_KEY in a .env file and load with python-dotenv
• Cache results in Redis with a 24h TTL — VALOR-to-instrument mappings rarely change
• Apply .strip().lstrip('0') before validation to normalise zero-padded input from custodian files
• Use NewType('Valor', str) to distinguish validated VALORs from raw strings in type annotations
• Store the isin field from the response — it enables downstream cross-referencing without additional API calls