The LEI in Numbers: The Global LEI System Continues to Expand
Growth in LEI adoption and a smooth bulk transference of LEIs demonstrates trust and transparency across the Global LEI System.
Author: Stephan Wolf
Date: 2023-10-19
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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 Q3 2023, highlights that over 55,000 LEIs were issued globally throughout the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total active LEI population was around 2.36 million. This represents a quarterly growth rate of 2.4%.
For a further summary of the past quarter’s data, the below infographic contains the key statistics from Q3 2023.
So-called ‘competitive markets’ refer to those with over 1,000 LEIs, based on the number of LEI issuers providing services in the jurisdiction. The most competitive markets are those with the most LEI issuers per jurisdiction, with similar market share, and vice versa for the least competitive markets.
Regulatory momentum continued to drive LEI growth in Q3, with India (8.2%) and Saudi Arabia (7.5%) once again maintaining the highest jurisdictional LEI growth rates. This was followed by Estonia (6.5%), Greece (4.8%) and Croatia (4.7%) as the remaining top growth jurisdictions. The growth in Estonia, Greece, and Croatia was primarily due to the market activities of local LEI issuers.
The overall LEI renewal rate in Q3 dropped slightly from 59.4% to 58.3%, with quarterly renewals in EU jurisdictions at 63.2%, a slight decrease from the previous quarter. Renewals in non-EU jurisdictions decreased to 49.8%. Hungary demonstrated the highest renewal rate (94.4%), followed by Japan (90.4%), Finland (86.1%), Germany (80.3%), and India (79.7%).
In the third quarter of 2023, GMEI Utility, a service of BED B.V. (Business Entity Data B.V.), terminated its operation. Due to the large volume of LEIs managed by Business Entity Data B.V., the LEIs were transferred to seven thoroughly evaluated LEI issuers. More than 414,000 LEIs were transferred during this process. This quarter’s transfer statistics demonstrate the success of GLEIF’s ‘offboarding’ process, which ensures LEI service continuity for impacted legal entities. The bulk transfers and subsequent individual transfers demonstrate continued and active engagement with the Global LEI System. The top five LEI issuers now include Bloomberg, London Stock Exchange, Ubisecure, WM Datenservice and EQS.
The Global LEI System remains stronger and more expansive than ever before, reflected in the sustained increase in the number and variety of enabling stakeholders participating in the Global LEI System, including LOUs, Validation Agents, LEI and vLEI issuers, Registration Agents, and LEI mapping partners. The U.S. remains the largest market for LEI adoption globally.
During our previous quarterly report, we explored how the Global LEI Index had seen significant and sustained growth in reported data across the formats implemented in March 2022 as a result of the Regulatory Oversight Committee’s policies on new LEI data. Happily, this growth trend has continued. At the end of Q3 2023, over 5,300 entities were identified as government entities (up from 5,100 in Q2 2023) and 32 as international organizations. In addition, over 128,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of approximately 5,000 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 detail 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 2023.
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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.
