Q2 2021 Legal Entity Identifier Data Quality Report Shows Top Issuer Remains RapidLEI

Competition is key to the Global Legal Entity Identifier System’s success. The more competition across regions, the more choice for individual businesses. That means lower prices and higher adoption rates! We chose to use the RapidLEI order system as our LEI order system because of its unique API’s providing a fast and cheaper ordering process for our customers.

We’re glad to see that people are transferring to RapidLEI in droves! Last quarter alone saw 1,902 transfers to Ubisecure (RapidLEI’s parent company). Our customers have had a big part to play in that success, so we’d like to thank everyone who has transferred to us. We’ve also seen an increase in multi-year deals, which we believe is due to an increased trust in our business and its longevity. We look forward to the next quarter as we continue to strive for global LEI adoption.

Increased adoption in Turkey

Another great success this quarter has been the increased adoption of LEIs in Turkey.

As the GLEIF point out in their blog post:

“This was driven largely by a regional deadline to map LEIs to legacy international securities identification numbers, in line with the joint initiative from the Association of National Numbering Agencies and GLEIF.”

We mentioned in our Q1 post that ANNA have recently added more jurisdictions and more are coming so we might see adoption in other countries rise too.

There has also been increased growth in Estonia, Iceland and Lithuania which are likely due to increased competition in those jurisdictions.

Non-renewal could be an issue going forward

The five jurisdictions with the highest non-renewal rates include Thailand (60.6%), Belize (57%), Brazil (57%), the United Kingdom (56.9%) and the United States (56.1%). Being predominantly UK-based here at ManagedLEI, we try to encourage organisations to renew by signing up for multi-year LEIs. In the long run, you save money by paying in advance but you also reap the benefits of having auto renewal handled by us and renewal reminders sent to your email.

This is an especially helpful service for clients who manage a large number of LEIs, such as wealth management firms, investment firms, insurance firms and similar.

The GLEIF have said they:

“advocate for LEI renewals to be made mandatory whenever LEI issuance is mandatory.”

The quality of data is hugely important to ensuring the system is working as it should be. There are parties relying on the accuracy of the information listed in the LEI to make reliable business decisions such as those for KYC and AML requirements. I would go as far as suggesting that any machine automated tasks that read lapsed LEI information do not accept them.

Browsers take this stance with HTTPS certificates for websites and we rarely see a website offline due to a lapsed certificate. When they do, it becomes big news, like the time LinkedIn went offline. Companies need to have consequences for not renewing LEIs in this way so that the system remains as secure and up to date as possible.

Lessons from Q2

While there is still work to be done on the renewal of LEIs to keep the system accurate, we are seeing rapid adoption from across the world which itself will bring huge benefits for cross border communications, KYC, AML and payments. We could certainly do with a system that is accepted in all nations, open and machine readable, especially as the recent pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transactions.