The LEI in Numbers: Sustained Growth in Adoption and Renewals Continues in Q3
Growth in the adoption and renewal of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is being driven by regulatory initiatives and voluntary, market-led uptake as use cases continue to expand.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2025-10-21
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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.
LEI adoption continued to grow during the third quarter of 2025. Approximately 81,000 LEIs were issued globally, increasing the total active LEI population to over 2.86 million. This represents a strong quarterly growth rate of 2.9% – particularly given the impact of the usual seasonal slowdown – and marks an increase on the same period in 2024 (2.7%).
The application of the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) in January 2025 has driven uptake throughout the year, and it again contributed to growth in Q3 – particularly in Latvia (5.4%) and Lithuania (4.5%).
India (9.3%) remained the jurisdiction with the highest growth rate, following the completion of a phase-wise introduction of the LEI for all large corporate borrowers of banks in India. Elsewhere, the market activities of local LEI issuers continued to promote LEI adoption in the Middle Eastern jurisdictions of the United Arab Emirates (5.3%) and Saudi Arabia (4.8%).
Renewal rates continue to increase
Robust growth in LEI adoption was again complemented by an increase in LEI renewals, which increased for the third successive quarter to reach 57.1% (56.4% in the previous quarter). The jurisdictions with the highest renewal rates remained the same, with Japan leading (90.9%), followed by Finland (83.2%), India (79.6%), Germany (77.3%), and Liechtenstein (74%).
In the EU, the renewal rate hit 62.2%. There was also growth in renewals across non-EU jurisdictions, which rose to 49%. The uptick – particularly in the United States and United Kingdom – can largely be attributed to the voluntary adoption and application of the LEI, demonstrating that industry participants are realizing benefits beyond the LEI’s traditional origins in capital markets.
One key focus area is the drive to create a more interoperable and inclusive digital trade ecosystem. For example, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) UK has advocated for the increased use of the LEI to enable the digitalization of global supply chains and unlock trillions in economic opportunity. Elsewhere, there is growing interest in the role of the LEI in enhancing trust and transparency across a range of use cases, including cross-border payments, digital assets, ESG reporting, and beyond.
Regarding the Regulatory Oversight Committee’s (ROC) policies on LEI data formats first introduced in March 2022, approximately 6,500 entities were identified as government entities (up from 6,400 in Q2 2025) and 74 as international organizations. Over 151,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of over 3,100 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 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.
