The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has clarified the numbering scheme that must be used by organisations issuing entity identifiers that they want to transition into the global LEI system and allocated the first four-character prefix that is designed to support the transition of these identifiers.
The prefix has been allocated to the DTCC and Swift collaboration that has been issuing CFTC Interim Compliant Identifiers, or CICIs, for legal entities involved in OTC derivatives trading on behalf of the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission since August 2012.
Clarifying its third progress note published at the end of October, which included a breakdown of the 20-character number to be used for LEIs, the FSB reiterates that pre-LEI solutions provided by pre-Local Operating Units (LOUs) that want to transition into the global LEI system when it goes live in March 2013 must adopt the numbering scheme set out for the LEI by November 30. They must also use a four-digit random number allocated by the FSB to prefix identifiers issued ahead of the global LEI system go live in March 2013.
The first prefix to be allocated and published on the FSB website covers CICIs and is 5493. More prefixes will be added if other organisations issuing identifiers want to transition them into the LEI system and can meet the numbering scheme outlined by the FSB before November 30.
Responsibility for allocating prefixes will transfer to the Regulatory Oversight Committee and Central Operating Unit of the global LEI system once they are in place early next year. It is these organisations that will then decide the rule for new four-character prefixes that will be allocated uniquely to each LOU and form part of the 20-character entity identifier used when the global system is up and running.
