10 years on, the Global LEI System continues to see significant and sustained growth as the need for verifiable organizational identity increases across the globe.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2025-01-20
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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.
Since its inception 10 years ago, the Global LEI System has revolutionized how legal entities are identified, bringing unprecedented trust and transparency to various use cases that extend far beyond its initial beginnings in capital markets.
This broad benefit is reflected by the system's significant and sustained expansion, which continued in 2024. More than 278,000 new LEIs were issued, bringing the total active LEI population to over 2.63 million, with an annual growth rate of 11.5%.
Issuance growth in 2024 was most evident in India, which saw a 35.9% increase and became the second-largest jurisdiction by active LEI population. This milestone reflects the cumulative impact of a proactive and sustained regulatory program to embed the LEI into the Indian economy and provides a compelling illustration of how standardized, verifiable organizational identity can further bolster trust and transparency worldwide.
As we move into 2025, there is a clear opportunity to further extend the value of the LEI as a ‘public good’. Hardwiring verifiable organizational identity, and therefore trust, into every business relationship promises to ease global trade and accelerate economic growth while tackling the scourge of financial and corporate fraud, financial exclusion, money laundering, and the financing of terrorism.
This starts with increasing the LEI’s footprint and driving broader coverage across all regions, increasing the value of the Global LEI System for everyone.
We will also continue to promote and support industry momentum for the LEI and its digital counterpart, the verifiable LEI (vLEI), in cross-border ecosystems and other use cases – including payments, supply chains, ESG, Web 3.0, and beyond.
Finally, we are committed to tackling the emerging and complex identity-based risks brought by the digitalization of businesses, including contributing to the global fight against digital fraud and impersonation.
Data from the latest business report, covering Q4 2024, reveals that over 76,000 LEIs were issued during the quarter – up from 67,000 in Q3. This represents a quarterly growth rate of 3%, compared to 2.7% in Q3.
New Zealand (15%) and Australia (9.2%) once again had the highest growth rates at the jurisdiction level, primarily due to the ongoing impact of the updated over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transaction reporting rules from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), which came into force in October 2024. The new rules mandate the LEI as the only permitted entity identifier for counterparty identification, phasing out the use of the AVID code and Business Identifier Code (BIC).
While the growth rate will taper in the coming quarters as entities achieve compliance with the updated reporting rules, it marks the harmonization of the Australian market with other major global jurisdictions. This reflects the founding vision of the G20 and Financial Stability Board for the LEI to serve as a universal means of bringing transparency to derivatives markets and reducing counterparty risk. Swift compliance across the region also reflects the efficient issuance of LEIs, which an extensive global network of Validation Agents has supported.
As highlighted earlier, India also saw continued growth (8.5%). Increased adoption in Saudi Arabia (5.7%) and Lithuania (5.3%) was primarily due to the market activities of local LEI issuers.
Following increases in recent quarters, the overall LEI renewal rate remained at 56.1% in Q4—staying stable in EU jurisdictions at 62.1% and rising in non-jurisdictions to 46.4%. Japan again had the highest renewal rate (91.7%), followed by Finland (83.7%), India (78.7%), Germany (76.5%), and Liechtenstein (73.3%).
Increasing LEI renewals throughout 2024 follows the introduction of the Policy Conformity Flag in Q1, which was launched to make it clear to global data users whether an LEI record is up-to-date and complete with relationship reporting. This reflects the ongoing commitment of the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) and GLEIF to encouraging renewals and promoting current, complete data reporting by legal entities, with further initiatives planned in 2025.
Regarding the ROC's policies on new LEI data formats introduced in March 2022, the number of entities identified as government entities reduced from approximately 6,300 in Q3 to 5,800 in Q4. Entities reported as international organizations increased to 68 (from 64 in Q3). Over 142,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of around 2,500 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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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.
