In the recent GFMA webinar, Stephan Wolf, CEO of the GLEIF (Global LEI Foundation), gave an update on the upcoming LEI record ‘conformity flag’. The flag is a binary indicator for the completeness and arguably quality, of the LEI record as determined against the registration and reporting policies set by the LEI ROC (Regulatory Oversight Committee).

The flag is an important addition to the LEI record for many reasons. As it will only be active when the LEI is in overall conformity, it will give enhanced trust and reliability for the LEI reference data it represents. It will help anyone (or anything) relying on the LEI data to make more informed decisions. It will encourage LEI holders to keep their LEI active, up to date and accurate – an obvious benefit to the entire LEI ecosystem.

How will an organisation be able to obtain the conformity flag?

Over time, the flag will be added to all LEI records. Obtaining the conformity flag requires successful checks against a number of reporting criteria which will be officially published by the LEI ROC in coming months as the ecosystem prepares for implementation in 2021.

We expect that checking for the presence of the conformity flag checks will quickly become a critical part of any LEI-based KYC, onboarding, or other identity verification workflows.

How will this affect RapidLEI and our LEI Applicants?

Data quality, i.e. the completeness and accuracy of reference data in the LEI record, has always been important to RapidLEI. We republish the GLEIF data quality reports on RapidLEI for full transparency, and we’re happy to be able to maintain an exceptional data quality rate. Our existing focus on data quality prepares RapidLEI effectively for the changes.

The RapidLEI platform employs automated verification technology to ensure data quality and is pre-integrated into business registries. The majority of LEIs we issue are already corroborated (as shown in the RapidLEI LEI issuance statistics). We’ve designed our platform to make it easy to report entity relationships, and our automated renewal processes deliver high renewal rates. All these factors result in an already high data accuracy, which means minimal challenges to issued LEIs.

Even though official conformity criteria and data check statistics are yet to be published by the GLEIF and LEI ROC, running our own internal logic on the ~40k LEIs issued to date tells us that 90%+ of our issued LEIs should achieve conformity flags. As the official conformity criteria is released and we get closer to the implementation of the flag, RapidLEI and our partners will work closely with the remaining non-conformant LEI holders to maximise an organisation’s chance to achieve compliance.

The Ubisecure team is extremely supportive of the new conformity flag. When the wider LOU community has committed to delivering high rates of conformity flags, the overall quality of the LEI database will be significantly enhanced. Such enhanced quality cements the LEI as the absolute best choice as a central, trusted organisation identifier for all B2B identity services and products.

For more details on LEIs, check out our automated LEI service – RapidLEI.