This is GLEIF
Established by the Financial Stability Board in June 2014, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) is tasked to support the implementation and use of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI). The foundation is backed and overseen by the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC). The ROC represents public authorities from around the globe that have come together to increase transparency in global markets, and strengthen the fight against financial crime and corporate fraud. GLEIF is a supra-national not-for-profit organization headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.
GLEIF makes available the Global LEI Index. This is the only global online source that provides open, standardized and high quality legal entity reference data. By doing so, GLEIF enables people and businesses to make smarter, less costly and more reliable decisions about who to do business with.
GLEIF is, by its statutes, agnostic to any particular commercial or political interests. In this way, GLEIF is unique in the entity identification market.
GLEIF services ensure the operational integrity of the Global LEI System. GLEIF continuously increases both the information available within, and the quality of, the LEI data pool and makes public access to the information ever easier. The introduction of the vLEI, a secure, digital counterpart to the LEI, now enables LEI data to be used in a wide range of digital verification and authentication use-cases. To obtain an overview of the services GLEIF provides to the public and to its partners in the Global LEI System, refer to the GLEIF Service Catalog.
Thanks to the services provided by GLEIF, the LEI remains the industry standard best suited to providing open and reliable data for unique legal entity identification management.
GLEIF has endorsed the International Open Data Charter. This aims to foster greater coherence and collaboration to promote the increased adoption and implementation of shared open data principles, standards and good practice across sectors around the world.
GLEIF mission
GLEIF manages a network of partners, known as the LEI issuing organizations. These issuers provide trusted services and open, reliable data for unique legal entity identification worldwide.
Following the financial crisis, the goal of the drivers of the LEI initiative - the Group of 20, the Financial Stability Board and many regulators around the world – was to use the LEI to create transparency in the derivatives markets. As demonstrated with the current LEI population, these efforts have generated excellent results. LEIs have been assigned to legal entities all around the world. Many regulations globally require the use of LEIs to uniquely identify counterparties to transactions in regulatory reporting. Public authorities in these jurisdictions rely on the LEI to evaluate risk, improve the accuracy of financial data, take corrective steps and, if required, minimize market abuse.
GLEIF’s position is that broad LEI adoption will also generate significant advantages for the wider business community and the global digital economy.