GLEIF celebrates a decade of progress in the global LEI system
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) is celebrating ten years of the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) System—a game-changer in global business transparency and security. GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech reflected on the system’s growth and its critical role in building trust in our digital economy – with over 2.6 million entities now using LEIs for unique identification across global financial markets.
The LEI acts as a universal ID card for organisations, simplifying financial transactions, regulatory reporting, and compliance by enabling fast, clear, and consistent entity identification worldwide. This unique identifier reduces confusion in cross-border transactions, supports Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks to fight financial crime, and links data across systems, enhancing quality and transparency.
LEIs also add substantial value in ESG reporting and beneficial ownership tracking by providing reliable, comparable data. Meanwhile, the new digital verifiable LEI (vLEI) boosts security further, enabling instant digital verification and supporting secure, XBRL tagged reports. Together, LEI and vLEI make financial reporting more trustworthy and accessible in an increasingly digital economy.
At this year’s GLEIS Forum, GLEIF honoured top LEI issuers, recognising InfoCamere, KDPW, and Depozitarul Central S.A. for their data quality efforts, while Legal Entity Identifier India Limited (LEIL) earned the new “Transparency in Global Markets Challenge” award for innovative outreach.
Congratulations to the winners, and here’s to the next ten years of LEI progress! To learn more, visit GLEIF’s website and don’t miss Alexandre’s keynote address to Data Amplified, next Tuesday!
