News & Media GLEIF Blog

The LEI in Numbers: Reflecting on Key Milestones in 2022

With growing adoption and the implementation of new data formats, the Global LEI System delivered more transparency and trust to global data consumers in 2022


Author: Stephan Wolf

  • Date: 2023-01-19
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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.

2022 marked a historic year for LEI growth globally. Q1 saw worldwide adoption reach a new milestone of over two million active LEIs, and the year concluded with a total LEI population of 2.19 million, with over 252,000 LEIs issued. This represented a strong annual growth rate of 12.9% and reaffirms the increasing maturity of the Global LEI System.

2022 also saw the successful implementation of new LEI data formats following new ROC policy. This increased the scope of the data contained in each LEI, capturing details on the classification of public sector entities, legal entity events and fund relationship information. Since its implementation, there has been consistent growth in data reported across these formats, creating more transparency in the global marketplace and broadening the utility of the Global LEI System for all data consumers.

Data from the latest business report, covering Q4 2022, highlights that over 80,000 LEIs were issued throughout the quarter – a strong increase from the 50,000 issued in Q3. This represents a quarterly growth rate in the total active LEI population of 3.8%.

For a further summary of the past quarter’s data, the below infographic contains the key statistics from Q4 2022.

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.

China demonstrated the highest jurisdictional LEI growth rate in Q4, with an increase of 32.1%. This saw China meet its 2022 objective, as laid out by the Chinese authorities, of growing LEI volume in mainland China to 100,000. Closely following was Saudi Arabia (25%), which has consistently featured in the top growth jurisdictions throughout 2022 due to the continued success of the Saudi Credit Bureau’s LEI initiative with the Saudi Central Bank, which encourages LEI adoption across the region’s financial sector. The remainder of the top five growth jurisdictions comprised Thailand (9.1%), Türkiye (7.3%), and India (7.1%).

Growth in reporting across the new data formats remained consistent throughout Q4. 88,000 legal entities are now reporting fund relationships, an increase of over 15,000 on the previous quarter. In addition, there were over 4,800 government entities reported in the Global LEI System by the end of the quarter (up from 4,600 in Q3), while total international organizations increased to 27 (from 19 in Q3).

The overall renewal rate for Q4 settled at 60.1%, which represents a slight decrease on the previous quarter (61.9%). This is a common trend for the final quarter of the year as renewals slow in December in regions celebrating the festive period.

Japan was the jurisdiction with the highest renewal rate (91%) in Q4, a position which it has held throughout 2022. Other jurisdictions in the top five renewal rates are Luxembourg (88.5%), Finland (87.3%), Norway (81.6%), and Liechtenstein (81.2%).

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.

Readers to note that, in March 2022, the CDF formats were updated based on the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) policies: Legal Entity Events (formerly referred to as “Corporate Actions") and Data History in the Global LEI System, Policy on Fund Relationships and Guidelines for the registration of Investment Funds in the Global LEI System, and LEI Eligibility for General Government Entities Guidance Document.

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 access to 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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About the author:

Stephan Wolf was the CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) (2014 - 2024). 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.


Tags for this article:
Global LEI System Business Reports, Global LEI Index, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), LEI Issuers (Local Operating Units - LOUs), LEI Renewal, Open Data, Data Management, Level 1 / Business Card Data (Who is Who), Level 2 / Relationship Data (Who Owns Whom)