A company's LEI and its registration number are two different codes. The home register issues the registration number; the LEI is a second, global key whose record names that register and that number and adds the company's parents. The EU's AML Regulation defines it as "a unique alphanumeric reference code based on the ISO 17442 standard assigned to a legal entity" (Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, Article 2(1)(27)). In KYB verification, it is one identifier among several, beside the registry extract and the ownership chart.
Companies, trusts, partnerships and government bodies can hold one. Natural persons, in principle, cannot, although the Regulatory Oversight Committee has set conditions under which individuals acting in a business capacity may obtain one (questions and answers of April 2024 on GLEIF's LEI page).
How is an LEI code built and issued?
An accredited issuer, a Local Operating Unit, assigns the code for a fee, under ISO 17442; ISO's record of Part 1 dates the current edition to August 2020. GLEIF's code structure page splits the 20 characters into three parts:
- Characters 1 to 4: the issuer's prefix, which keeps codes from different issuers apart.
- Characters 5 to 18: the entity's own part. By rule it carries "no embedded intelligence", so nothing in it encodes a country or a sector.
- Characters 19 and 20: two check digits.
GLEIF prints its own code as an example, 506700GE1G29325QX363: prefix 5067, entity part 00GE1G29325QX3, check digits 63. Worked by hand, the check turns each letter into a number (A is 10, Z is 35), giving 5067001614116293252633363, and divides by 97. The remainder is 1, the result a valid code gives. Type a 4 for the final 3 and the remainder becomes 2. The typo is caught before any search runs.
GLEIF itself was set up by the Financial Stability Board in June 2014. It accredits the issuers and runs the system under the Regulatory Oversight Committee, more than 65 regulators and public authorities from over 50 countries.
What information does an LEI record hold?
Table 1. The fields of an LEI record and how a KYB analyst uses each.
| Field | What it holds | Where it comes from | How a KYB analyst uses it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal name and other names | The official name, plus names in other languages or earlier names | The entity, validated by the issuer against the register | Match it to the registry extract and to the name you screen |
| Legal and headquarters address | Registered office and head office | The entity and the register | Compare it with the address on the application |
| Registration authority and number | The register's code on GLEIF's list and the entity's number in it | The issuer's validation | Open the register itself with this number |
| Legal form | An ISO 20275 legal form code | The issuer | Check it against the constitution you collected |
| Entity status | Active or inactive, as last reported | The entity | Read it only together with the registration status |
| Registration status and next renewal date | Issued, lapsed or retired, and the date the data falls due | The issuer and GLEIF | A passed renewal date means stale data |
| Corroboration level | Entity supplied only, partially or fully corroborated | The issuer | Weigh how far the data was checked |
| Direct and ultimate parent | The parents' LEIs, or a reporting exception reason | Level 2 data the entity reports | A start for the ownership chart, not the UBO |
| BIC | Every BIC mapped to the entity | The GLEIF and SWIFT mapping file | Tie payment messages to the entity |
GLEIF calls the first rows Level 1 data, the answer to "who is who", and the parent rows Level 2, "who owns whom" (GLEIF's Level 2 page). Level 2 follows accounting consolidation. Since May 2017 each entity reports its direct and its ultimate accounting consolidating parent, and for a parent it does not report it gives a reason under the reporting exceptions format: among them, the owners are natural persons, the parent does not consolidate it, no known person controls it, or the information is non public. GLEIF's own record gives "no known person" for both parents.
What does a lapsed LEI mean?
Each record carries a next renewal date, and the entity confirms its data with its issuer once a year. Miss that date and the status moves from issued to lapsed, which GLEIF's LEI data format defines as a registration that "has not been renewed by the NextRenewalDate and is not known by public sources to have ceased operation". The code still points to the same entity; only the confirmation of its data has lapsed. A retired record belongs to an entity that ceased operation, and a duplicate is the copy no longer to be used.
Lapsed records are common. In the first GLEIF Golden Copy of 1 November 2026, 1,215,890 of 3,480,941 records were lapsed, about 35 percent, against 1,997,798 issued (GLEIF API).
Read a lapsed LEI as stale data, not as a closed company: 1,215,889 of those lapsed records still gave the entity status as active. Whether the company still exists is a question for the register.
Who has to have an LEI?
Any legal entity in a financial transaction may get an LEI. The duty to hold one comes from regulators, most often these:
- EU derivatives reporting. Since 29 April 2024, an EMIR report must "use an ISO 17442 Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) code" for each of seven entity roles in the report, counterparties included, and the reporting counterparty must keep its own LEI renewed (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1860, Article 3).
- EU transaction reporting. Investment firms identify clients that are legal persons by LEI (MiFIR, Article 26(6)). From 3 January 2018, when MiFIR took effect, ESMA allowed six months to serve clients without one if the firm first held the papers to apply for them (statement of 20 December 2017).
- US swaps. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFTC has each swap counterparty eligible for an LEI obtain, maintain and be identified by one in swap records and reports (17 CFR 45.6).
- EU transfers of funds and crypto assets. Since 30 December 2024 a payment carries the payer's and the payee's current LEI where the message format has the field and the payer supplied it, and crypto asset transfers follow the same travel rule (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, Articles 4 and 14).
- EU customer due diligence from 10 July 2027. The AML Regulation lists the LEI among a legal entity's identification data, "where available" (Article 22(1)(b)(iii)).
The FSB's report of 7 July 2022 on wider LEI use in cross border payments addresses its recommendations to jurisdictions, standard setters, the ROC and GLEIF.
How is an LEI different from a SWIFT/BIC code?
In a payment to a supplier's bank, the message is addressed to the bank's BIC, while the bank's LEI names the legal entity that answers for it in a regulatory report. The SWIFT/BIC code follows ISO 9362, with SWIFT as its registration authority, and identifies institutions in the financial services industry. The LEI follows ISO 17442 and identifies any legal entity, bank or not.
Since February 2018 GLEIF and SWIFT have published an open source BIC to LEI relationship file, updated monthly, which matches a BIC to the LEI of the organization that holds it, so either code leads to the other.
How do you look up an LEI?
Two free routes reach the same data. GLEIF's own search covers the Global LEI Index, which GLEIF publishes as Golden Copy files three times a day. The free LEI lookup from complead, formerly Sanction Scanner, reads the GLEIF Golden Copy in three steps:
- Type the company name and pick it from the list, or paste the code.
- The code is checked against ISO 17442 first, so a typo stops there.
- The result shows the status and next renewal date, the registry number, both parents or the exception reason, and every mapped BIC, and the entity and its parents can then be screened in one click.
Either way, compare the registry number with the register's own extract.
What does an LEI prove in KYB, and what does it not?
Take a payment firm (illustrative) onboarding a trading company that writes its LEI on the application. The record confirms the legal name, register, number and legal form and, if parents are reported, the group the company consolidates into. That settles identity and part of the structure.
The parent fields follow accounting, not control. A company owned 60 percent by one person shows "natural persons" and names nobody, so the ultimate beneficial owner still comes from the register, the declaration and the KYC documents collected. The LEI also says nothing about sanctions, and the entity and each parent still need screening.
KYB and UBO verification in complead runs those two remaining checks. It follows owners and parents up the chain to natural persons, screens every party the chain reveals and reports any layer it cannot resolve as a gap.
When the LEI record and the register disagree on a name, an address or a status, your team decides which one the file follows. For most KYB files that should be the register, with the LEI kept as the key that finds the right entry and the group around it.
Related terms
- Know your business (KYB). Due diligence on a business customer: what it is, who owns it and what it does.
- Ultimate beneficial owner. The person who in the end owns or controls a company, often through other companies.
- SWIFT/BIC code. The bank code that routes a payment message; GLEIF maps it to the bank's LEI.
- Travel rule. The duty to send payer and payee details with a transfer, the LEI among them where the field exists.
- MiFID. The EU investment services rules; their MiFIR transaction reports name legal person clients by LEI.
- KYB onboarding. The stages that take a business customer from application to an open account.
How this entry was checked. Every count here was pulled through the GLEIF API from the first Golden Copy published on 1 November 2026, and the check digit sum was worked by hand from GLEIF's own record. The same day the rules were read in their official texts: Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1860, MiFIR, Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, the AML Regulation and 17 CFR 45.6, with ESMA's statement of 20 December 2017 and the FSB report of July 2022. GLEIF's LEI, Level 2, reporting exception, data format and BIC mapping pages, its April 2024 questions and answers, the ROC site and the ISO 17442 record supplied the rest. The onboarding case in the last section is illustrative. Last reviewed: 2 November 2026.
