The LEI in Numbers: Adoption Grows as Implementations Continue to Expand Beyond Capital Markets
Growing adoption of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) outside its origins in capital markets demonstrates the clear potential to deliver urgently needed organizational trust and transparency across all global digital ecosystems.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2025-07-21
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The Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF) is proud of its ongoing transparency initiatives, including its open approach to providing unrestricted access to the latest LEI data from around the world with the Quarterly LEI System Business Reports, which are made publicly available free of charge. Through this ‘LEI in Numbers’ blog series, GLEIF aims to highlight key data from the latest report, explaining trends and profiling successes from the global LEI rollout.
Momentum across the Global LEI System continued in Q2 2025. Approximately 93,000 LEIs were issued globally during the quarter, increasing the total active LEI population to 2.8 million. This represents a strong quarterly growth rate of 3.4%.
Regulatory initiatives bolstered sustained growth in LEI adoption in Q2. The top growth rate was observed in India (13.2%), where, following the completion of the phase-wise introduction of the LEI for all large corporate borrowers of banks, all entities with exposure totaling ₹5 crore or more now require an LEI to be granted renewal or enhancement of credit facilities.
Elsewhere, the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) continued to have a significant impact on LEI adoption, contributing to strong growth in Lithuania (5.7%), Latvia (5.1%), and Iceland (4.7%).
DORA aims to enhance the operational resilience of financial entities by improving their ability to manage ICT-related risks. Among the requirements, ICT service providers that are based in the EU and delivering critical functions for financial entities must now be identified through an active LEI or European Unique Identifier (EUID). And for ICT service providers outside the EU, the LEI is mandated as the sole identifier.
The swift uptake of the LEI by ICT service providers worldwide to achieve compliance has highlighted the role that LEI issuers and Validation Agents play in enabling efficient adoption, with DORA-related issuance now anticipated to taper over the coming quarters.
Meeting the urgent need for transparency across the global digital economy
Yet, it is the broader significance of DORA that promises to have the most lasting impact, as the regulation marks a major implementation of the LEI outside of capital markets. By meeting the need for consistent and unambiguous identification of entities across borders, a compelling precedent has been established, demonstrating how the LEI can deliver much-needed organizational trust and transparency. This approach can be extended across all global ecosystems, including payments, supply chains, and digital assets and infrastructure.
We are already seeing significant momentum for the LEI in the payments space. Most notably, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has published its updated Recommendation 16 to enhance payment transparency which, for the first time, references the LEI as a key identifier for legal persons in domestic and cross-border transactions. The role of the LEI in promoting increased payment transparency is also recognized in the EU’s Instant Payment Regulation (IPR), which acknowledges its ability to support more effective Verification of Payee (also known as Confirmation of Payee or IBAN Name Check).
Looking ahead, the convergence of emerging global and national policies and regulations toward greater openness, accountability, and transparency has the potential to serve as a springboard for the LEI, empowering organizations with the capability to be universally recognized across borders and technology infrastructures.
Renewal rates continue to increase
Strong growth in adoption was once again accompanied by a rise in renewals, with the overall LEI renewal rate increasing to 56.4% in Q2. Renewal rates in EU jurisdictions declined slightly to 61.6%, while rates in non-EU jurisdictions continued to rise to 47.9%. The highest renewal rate was again seen in Japan (91.8%), followed by Finland (83%), India (79.3%), Germany (76.3%), and Liechtenstein (73.7%).
Regarding the ROC's policies on LEI data formats first introduced in March 2022, approximately 6,400 entities were identified as government entities and 75 as international organizations (up from 6,300 and 71 in Q1 2025, respectively). Over 148,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, representing an increase of more than 3,500 from the previous quarter.
For the full report, which includes further detail on the status of LEI issuance and growth potential, the level of competition between LEI issuing organizations in the Global LEI System, and Level 1 and 2 reference data, please visit the Global LEI System Business Reports page.
If you are interested in reviewing the latest daily LEI data, our Global LEI System Statistics Dashboard contains daily statistics on the total and active number of LEIs issued. This feature now enables any user to review historical data by geography, increasing transparency on the overall progress of the LEI.
For further details or to access historical data, please visit the Global LEI System Business Report Archive. We look forward to sharing our progress each quarter as we continue to drive LEI adoption in 2025.
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Alexandre Kech is the CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).
Prior to joining GLEIF, Alexandre Kech was Head of Digital Securities at the SIX Digital Exchange. As a member of the Executive Board, Alex had full executive responsibility for the Digital Securities business vertical, including sales and relationship management, product development, business design, and ecosystem expansion.
Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC) and, most recently, Citi Ventures. As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built custody and prime brokerage services for crypto and other digital assets from scratch. As Blockchain & Digital Asset director at Citi Ventures, he built a team to engage the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital assets.
Alex is also involved in industry and standardization initiatives. As the convenor of the ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3, which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI), he is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (gdf.io) custody working group.
Alex earned a bachelor’s degree in translation and an Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology while building Onchain Custodian, putting theory into practice in real-time.
