The LEI in Numbers: Strong Regulatory Advocacy Drives Growth in Global Adoption
LEI adoption continues to be bolstered by emerging regulatory initiatives, providing global stakeholders with a blueprint for promoting increased trust and transparency across the digital economy
Author: Stephan Wolf
Date: 2024-04-23
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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.
The latest report, covering Q1 2024, highlights that over 66,000 LEIs were issued globally throughout the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total active LEI population was over 2.46 million. This represents a quarterly growth rate of 2.8%.
In the first quarter, India had the highest LEI growth rate at the jurisdiction level (9%). This comes amid the ongoing phase-wise introduction of the LEI for all large corporate borrowers of banks, meaning entities with exposure totaling ₹ ten crore or more require an LEI to be granted renewal or enhancement of credit facilities after 30 April 2024.
More broadly, strong LEI adoption in Q1 saw India become the fifth-largest jurisdiction by LEI population globally. This reflects the cumulative impact of strong regulatory advocacy over recent years, offering a compelling precedent for global stakeholders as they explore the potential for the LEI to address emerging challenges across the digital economy.
Regulatory momentum also propelled Japan (5.5%) into the top five growth jurisdictions. Revised over-the-counter (OTC) derivative reporting rules from the Financial Services Agency (FSA) came into effect on 1 April, requiring all participants in an OTC derivative transaction to have an LEI.
Strong growth in Latvia (6.2%), Lithuania (6.2%), and Greece (5.8%) was driven by the market activities of local LEI issuers.
Increasing transparency in global financial markets
The overall LEI renewal rate in Q1 was 55.5%, a slight decline on the previous quarter. This was again primarily due to a decrease in renewals in non-EU jurisdictions to 45.1%, while quarterly renewals in EU jurisdictions also dipped marginally to 61.8%. Hungary once again demonstrated the highest renewal rate (93.5%), followed by Japan (91%), Finland (84.1%), India (79.1%), and Germany (78.5%), respectively. In addition, rebounding renewal rates in jurisdictions such as Saudi Arabia demonstrated the positive impact of emerging business cases and market-level activities by local LEI issuers.
The recent launch of the Policy Conformity Flag also signaled the commitment of the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) and GLEIF to encouraging renewals and promoting current, complete data reporting by legal entities.
The new tool makes it clear to global data users whether an LEI record is up-to-date and complete with relationship reporting. By empowering entities to demonstrate their own unwavering commitment to transparency, global business communities stand to realize various benefits—including aiding the global fight against financial crime, monitoring market risk, and enhancing operational processes. The Policy Conformity Flag also provides a simple and elegant way for entities to ensure technical compliance with approximately 200 regulations worldwide that reference the LEI, many of which require LEIs to be active.
Continued momentum for new LEI data formats
Following the implementation of the ROC's policies on new LEI data formats back in March 2022, the sustained growth in reported data continued in Q1. Around 6,100 entities were identified as government entities and 44 as international organizations (up from 6,000 and 38 in Q4 2023, respectively). Approximately 134,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of around 3,000 on 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 2024.
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Stephan Wolf is the CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). Since March 2024, he has led the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)’s Industry Advisory Board (IAB) of the Digital Standards Initiative, the global platform for digital trade standards alignment, adoption, and engagement. Before he was appointed as Chair, he had been serving as Vice-Chair of the IAB since 2023. In the same year, he was elected to the Board of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Germany.
Between January 2017 and June 2020, Mr. Wolf was Co-convener of the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 68 FinTech Technical Advisory Group (ISO TC 68 FinTech TAG). In January 2017, Mr. Wolf was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Identity by One World Identity. He has extensive experience in establishing data operations and global implementation strategies. He has led the advancement of key business and product development strategies throughout his career. Mr. Wolf co-founded IS Innovative Software GmbH in 1989 and served first as its managing director. He was later named spokesman of the executive board of its successor, IS.Teledata AG. This company ultimately became part of Interactive Data Corporation, where Mr. Wolf held the role of CTO. Mr. Wolf holds a university degree in business administration from J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.
