Introduced under a mandate by the Financial Stability Board in November 2011 following the financial crisis of 2008, the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a 20-character, alpha-numeric code based on the ISO 17442 standard developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
It provides key reference information that seeks to create unique identification of legal entities engaged in financial transactions anywhere in the world. Each LEI provides information about an entity’s ownership structure and enables financial market participants to understand ‘who is who’ and ‘who owns whom’. In essence, a publicly available LEI data pool is a golden source reference library which is designed to provide transparency for all participants and certainty of who they are entering into a legal contract with and facing in transactions.
