The LEI in Numbers: Regulatory Momentum Drives Growing LEI Adoption Across Asia-Pacific
With the global banking industry convening in Beijing for Sibos 2024 this week, regulatory momentum is driving increased demand for the LEI across Asia-Pacific—signaling opportunities for LEI stakeholders to streamline compliance.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2024-10-24
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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 for Q3 2024 highlights that about 67,000 LEIs were issued globally throughout the quarter, taking the total active LEI population past 2.57 million. This represents a quarterly growth rate of 2.7%, which is particularly strong given the impact of the holiday season across many jurisdictions.
Demand for the LEI in Asia-Pacific is poised for significant growth, with a recent analysis from The Banker highlighting that a widespread compliance push stands to “speed up the process” of LEI adoption.
The correlation between regulatory support and increasing LEI issuance across the region was readily apparent in Q3. New Zealand and Australia had the highest growth rates at the jurisdiction level, with LEI issuance increasing by 18.7% and 10%, respectively. This was primarily due to the updated over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transaction reporting rules from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), which came into force on October 21, 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).
Importantly, preparation for the new regulation has been aided by an established network of Validation Agents across the region—delivering a simpler, faster and more convenient experience for organizations obtaining an LEI. This is demonstrated by the fact that Validation Agents are estimated to have facilitated approximately 40% of new LEI issuance in the region over the past quarter.
Momentum for the LEI also continues in India, which saw a 9.9% increase in issuance in Q3. With the LEI now firmly embedded within the Indian economy, GLEIF has opened an office in Mumbai to bolster on-the-ground support and engage directly with stakeholders to educate on the value LEIs can deliver beyond mandated use, while exploring emerging use-cases across different sectors.
Elsewhere, increased adoption in Thailand (5.4%) and the United Arab Emirates (5.3%) was driven by the market activities of local LEI issuers.
Renewals push continues to bolster global transparency
The overall LEI renewal rate in Q3 rose again to reach 56.1%, with renewals staying level in EU jurisdictions at 62.2% and increasing in non-EU jurisdictions to 46%. Japan had the highest renewal rate overall (91.1%), followed by Finland (84.4%), Liechtenstein (79.8%), India (78.3%), and Germany (76.9%).
The ongoing uptick in LEI renewals follows the introduction of the Policy Conformity Flag in Q1 2024, 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 signaled the ongoing commitment of the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) and GLEIF to encouraging renewals and promoting current, complete data reporting by legal entities.
Regarding the ROC's policies on new LEI data formats first introduced back in March 2022, approximately 6,300 entities were identified as government entities and 64 as international organizations (up from 6,200 and 52 in Q2 2024 respectively). Over 139,000 legal entities reported fund relationship structures, an increase of around 2,000 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.
