Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and Reference Data: Global Directory of Financial Entities

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) provides a global directory of legal entities participating in financial transactions. The data is registered and regularly verified according to protocols established by the Regulatory Oversight Committee. It is made available under a Creative Commons (CC0) license via the aws_open_data platform.

Use Cases

• Identify and verify legal entities in financial transactions based on the standardized 20-character LEI code.
• Analyze corporate ownership structures based on the 'who owns whom' information linked to each LEI.
• Assess micro and macro prudential risks for firms based on the globally standardized entity reference data.
• Monitor market integrity and contain financial fraud by tracking entity participation across markets.

Strengths

• Data follows the ISO 17442 standard, ensuring global interoperability.
• Information is publicly available and free of charge, supporting its use as a public good.
• Data is registered and regularly verified under established regulatory protocols.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific analytical tasks.

Provenance

Source

Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Collection Method

Data is registered by LEI issuing organizations and aggregated into the Global LEI Index.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is not specified in the input.

Freshness

Update frequency is unknown.

Geography

Global