The Global LEI System’s “Local Operating Units” (LOUs) issue LEIs. How to obtain an LEI? The registration form must be completed and sent to the service provider by legal organizations (further the LOU, Registration Agent, or any LEI service provider).
ROC authorities who require the use of a common identifier accept LEIs issued by pre-LOUs that have been endorsed by the ROC or recognized by the Global LEI Foundation (see LEI Uses). New institutions wishing to become LEI issuers must be accredited by the GLEIF as of October 7, 2015, and the GLEIF will monitor their compliance with the Global LEI System’s requirements. As part of the ongoing monitoring of conformity with the system’s standards, the GLEIF had to accredit pre-LOUs certified by the ROC, and the procedure was completed in early 2018. All LOUs must now be accredited by the GLEIF to operate.
LEI portability is a feature of LEIs.
The maintenance of an entity’s LEI can be “ported” from one LOU to the next. To do so, the entity’s authorized representative should contact the new LOU and provide any other documentation requested by the new LOU, including the entity’s existing LEI number. The original LOU will receive a call from the new LOU. During the process, the LEI does not change. There should be no porting price for the initial pre-LOU.
What precisely are the LOUs?
LOUs are utilities that have been endorsed by the ROC or accredited by the GLEIF under ROC supervision to provide LEI registrations and other services to registrants. The term “pre-LOUs” refers to the LOUs that were endorsed by the ROC before the Global LEI Foundation was able to take over this function. To that purpose, the ROC had established a set of guidelines for pre-LOUs to follow.
The LEIs and accompanying reference data are made freely and continuously available to the public and regulators through LOUs. New institutions wishing to become LEI issuers must be accredited by the GLEIF as of October 7, 2015, and the GLEIF will monitor their compliance with the Global LEI System’s requirements. Applications should be sent to the GLEIF; a description of the accreditation procedure can be found on the GLEIF website. Applicants do not need to be sponsored by a ROC member any longer, though ROC members will be notified of applications from inside their territories.
Business registers, stock exchanges, trading repositories, custodians of financial instruments, and numbering organizations issuing International Securities Identification Numbers are all examples of LOUs with various statuses.
The LEI is a regulatory requirement that permits individual organizations involved in transactions to be identified globally. You will very certainly be needed to obtain a Legal Entity Identifier if you are transacting in the global financial system, capital markets, or a regulated business (LEI).
On a worldwide scale, the Legal Entity Identifier has made it easier to identify trading counterparties. KYC, customer onboarding, AML checks, and regulatory reporting have all become more streamlined and efficient as a result of employing the LEI as a single identity for all financial organizations.
