The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is useful as a unique, unambiguous and persistent entity identifier, but when integrated with other datasets such as securities it can deliver both operational and business benefits.
Issues around driving business value from the LEI were discussed during a recent A-Team Group webinar that was moderated by A-Team editor Sarah Underwood and joined by Thomas Dunlap, global head of reference data operations at Goldman Sachs; Vimal Vel, vice president of global alliances and partnerships strategy at Dun & Bradstreet; Anastasia Dokuchaeva, director of global regulatory solutions at FactSet; and Marty Williams, director of business development and strategy at ICE Data Services.
The webinar speakers set the scene with an update on the LEI: over 490,000 LEIs have been issued, although many have lapsed; and the industry is looking forward to the Global LEI Foundation’s addition of Level 2 reference data to the LEI, which will provide a view of ‘who owns who’ in terms of an entity’s ultimate parent, and add to Level 1 reference data providing business card information. Beneficial ownership hierarchies are expected to follow.
Looking at the integration of the LEI with other datasets, a poll of the webinar’s audience showed 18% of respondents having completed as much integration as possible, 21% planning integration, 28% seeing value in integration but not yet making progress, and 33% having completed some integration.
Discussing the outcomes of integration, Dokuchaeva noted the potential to increase the accuracy of risk data aggregation for risk management, support improved due diligence for KYC, client onboarding and anti-money laundering, and later provide strategic marketing information about which entities are driving revenue.
Williams noted that by linking the LEI to securities, a clean picture of an entity’s capital structure can be seen. Vel added: “It is critical that organisations building data models include LEIs. This is not about coverage, but adoption of the LEI for value-based use cases.”
A second audience poll asking what benefits organisations expect to gain from integrating the LEI with other datasets showed an expectation of significant operational and business benefits.
Listen to the webinar to find out more about:
- Adoption of the LEI
- How the LEI is being augmented
- Integration of the LEI with other datasets
- Beneficial outcomes of integration
- A white paper on integration
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