LEI
An LEI, a Legal Entity Identifier, is a 20-character alphanumeric code defined by ISO 17442 that uniquely identifies a legal entity taking part in a financial or business transaction, anywhere in the world, for as long as that entity exists.
The code itself carries no embedded meaning about the entity: characters 1 to 4 identify the Local Operating Unit (LOU) that issued it, characters 5 to 18 are an entity-specific string assigned by that LOU, and the final two characters are check digits calculated with the ISO/IEC 7064 MOD 97-10 algorithm, so a code can be validated for typos before it is even looked up. Each LEI is assigned to exactly one legal entity and is never reissued to another.
The Global LEI System traces back to the 2008 financial crisis, when regulators found they could not reliably match counterparties across markets and jurisdictions. The G20 and the Financial Stability Board backed a single global identifier, and the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), a not-for-profit established under Swiss law in 2014, now administers the system under the oversight of the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC). GLEIF does not issue LEIs directly; accredited Local Operating Units do, following a common set of validation rules.
Every LEI comes with two levels of published reference data, free to query through the Global LEI Index: Level 1, "who is who", the entity's official name, registered address and registration authority as verified against an authoritative local source; and Level 2, "who owns whom", its direct and ultimate parent relationships where these are known and reportable. Because that data is standardised and publicly queryable, an LEI lets one counterparty identify another without relying on a national company register whose format and access rules differ from country to country.
Related terms
Is an LEI the same as a national company registration number?
No. A national registration number is assigned by one country’s register and only has meaning there. An LEI sits alongside it as a single global identifier, issued to the same standard everywhere, specifically so a counterparty in a different jurisdiction can identify and check an entity without first learning how that entity’s home country structures its own registration numbers.