How to identify all companies worldwide. Experience with the legal entity identifier (LEI)
Series: Occasional Papers. 2401.
Author: Alejandro Morales, Manuel Ortega, Joaquín Rivero and Susana Sala.
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Summary
In response to the financial crisis that began in 2008, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) launched a global registration system for legal entities. The initiative aimed to create a unique identifier – the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) – for each of the entities operating in the financial markets and to keep these codes updated. This document reviews the history of the process of establishing the system that manages this new code, as well as its governance and regulation. The benefits, limits and challenges of creating a global entity identification system that must be operational in markets and jurisdictions with different commercial regulations and uses in the management of this type of information are analysed. In this sense, it should be noted that having in place public administrative registries for identifying corporations is not standard practice in many countries and this affects the quality and coverage that can be achieved with a single global code such as the LEI.