The LEI in Numbers: Growth in Adoption sees Active LEI Population Surpass 2.5 Million
The latest milestone in LEI adoption comes as GLEIF celebrates its tenth anniversary, marking the progress made so far in promoting trust and transparency across the global economy and signaling the opportunities that lie ahead.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2024-07-25
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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 Q2 2024, highlights that over 69,000 LEIs were issued globally throughout the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total active LEI population had surpassed 2.5 million – reaching 2.52 million. This represents a quarterly growth rate of 2.8%.
India once again enjoyed the highest LEI growth rate at the jurisdiction level, increasing from 9% in Q1 to 12.1% in Q2. This follows the requirement for all entities with exposure totaling ₹ 10 crore or more to have an LEI to be granted renewal or enhancement of credit facilities after 30 April 2024, as part of the ongoing phase-wise introduction of the LEI for all large corporate borrowers of banks. It also reflects how sustained regulatory advocacy over recent years has now embedded the LEI within the fabric of the Indian economy as a critical business enabler.
The impact of regulatory momentum was evident elsewhere, with Australia seeing a growth rate of 6.6% in Q2. Key local initiatives driving LEI adoption include updated over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transaction reporting rules from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC). The regulation—which comes into force in October 2024—mandates the LEI as the only permitted entity identifier for counterparty identification, phasing out the use of the AVID code and Business Identifier Code (BIC). This will increase alignment with global market practices to reduce costs and complexity while helping to address the challenge of identifying smaller, non-financial counterparties.
Growth in Saudi Arabia (4.7%) can also be attributed to regulatory support, while increased adoption in Lithuania (4.5%) and the United Arab Emirates (4.3%) was driven by the market activities of local LEI issuers.
Increasing renewals to promote transparency in global financial markets
In Q1 2024, the Policy Conformity Flag was launched to make it clear to global data users whether an LEI record is up-to-date and complete with relationship reporting. This signaled the strong and continued commitment of the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) and GLEIF to encouraging renewals and promoting current, complete data reporting by legal entities.
While it will naturally take time for the full impact of the Policy Conformity Flag to be seen across the Global LEI System, the green shoots of progress are already evident. The overall LEI renewal rate in Q2 rose to 55.9%, with increases in renewals seen across both EU jurisdictions (62.2%) and non-EU jurisdictions (45.5%). Japan had the highest renewal rate overall (91.7%), followed by Finland (84.2%), India (80.2%), Germany (78.7%), and Liechtenstein (76.3%).
The successful implementation of the ROC's policies on new LEI data formats—first introduced back in March 2022— also continued in Q2. Around 6,200 entities were identified as government entities and 52 as international organizations (up from 6,100 and 44 in Q1 2024, respectively). Approximately 137,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of around 3,000 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 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.
