Bureau van Dijk (BvD), a provider of company information, is ready to meet financial institutions’ requirements for Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) hierarchy data once the data is defined by the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) of the LEI or agreed by financial market participants for use in the Global LEI System.
The lack of defined LEI hierarchy data has been a concern among market participants throughout the development of the Global LEI System and was the subject of heated discussion at A-Team Group’s recent Data Management Summit in New York. Without the ability to roll up risk through company hierarchies, the LEI fails to fulfil its initial purpose of helping regulators monitor and measure systemic risk. It also falls short in helping financial institutions improve internal risk management.
As debate continues about whether the ROC will mandate hierarchy data or whether market participants will agree rules on the data, BvD, which maintains data on nearly 150 companies worldwide and specialises in private company information and corporate ownership structures, says it already has all the hierarchy data that will be needed for the LEI. It is also supporting some banks that have embarked on building their own LEI data hierarchies ahead of regulatory requirements.
Andrew Cowley, senior vice president Americas at BvD, explains: “We have been collecting global legal entity ownership information for more than 20 years and working with financial firms to help them overcome some of their data challenges. We have the datasets needed to build LEI hierarchies and we make them as complete as possible and update them constantly. We are not LEI consultants per se, but customers can use their data licences to select and define hierarchy data for their counterparties.”
BvD partners about 120 global information providers to collect company data. It then enriches and standardises the data to deliver workflow solutions that support customer processes including compliance – BvD is big in the Anti-Money Laundering space, client onboarding, financial risk management and sales and marketing.
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