The LINC is a 16-digit loan identifier for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and student loans, developed by the ASF and Standard & Poor's Fixed Income Risk Management Services (FIRMS). The LINC was developed in coordination with ASF's Project RESTART, a loan-level disclosure initiative for the residential mortgage-backed securities industry. ASF assigns a unique number after receiving 30 data fields from the originator or servicer. LINC includes embedded data, such as underlying loan type, loan origination date, and country code. To promote integration of the assignment process, S&P FIRMS developed an automated request module to fit into existing platforms. The LINC is linked to loan-level information in the centralized data repository run by S&P FIRMS. LINC is available to originators and securitizers free of charge, but adoption seems to be dependent upon new regulations and its use is not currently general practice.