Regulatory Reporting
Global identifier org pairs with corporate registers to boost KYC
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February 3, 2025

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has partnered with two European corporate registers, partly to make Know Your Customer (KYC) checks easier. GLEIF’s “linking initiative” provides direct access to official registry data within legal entity identifier (LEI) records. It adds dedicated URLs to LEI records registered by the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK) and Companies House, the UK corporate register.
LEIs are 20-character alphanumeric codes, each one unique to a company, which are searchable on a global digital database to obtain clear identification in financial and other transactions. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), for example, requires clients’ LEIs to be included in transaction reports.
Expanding partnerships
Basel, Switzerland-headquartered GLEIF will seek to expand its partnerships with corporate registers to bring LEIs into the authoritative sources of company information. The goal is to make KYC and corporate due diligence easier by bringing the data sets together, said chief executive Alexandre Kech.
“If you start with an LEI, you have the information that’s available in the system and then you can deep dive into more information at the business registry level. Of course, it’s not solving the data quality issues in the business registries, but at a global level it enables the discoverability of companies,” Kech said.
GLEIF started the linking initiative with KVK in 2024 and recently expanded to Companies House this January . People based in the UK may naturally turn to Companies House to find corporate information, but the linking initiative will make it easier for users globally to perform due diligence, Kech added.
“If you are in Hong Kong or [mainland] China, or if you are in the US and dealing with a company with an LEI, you might be happy to be redirected directly to where more information can be found by that company. And thatʼs really what weʼre trying to achieve here: to accelerate KYC and support KYC processes for KYB [Know Your Business],” he added.
G20 recommends LEIs for payments
LEIs have existed for about 10 years and there are now around 160 mandates, guidance or regulations requiring them worldwide, Kech said. A little over 2.6 million are registered globally, Gleif data shows — around 189,000 of which are linked to the UK and another 144,000 to the Netherlands.
As use cases for LEIs have grown so has demand, and Kech hopes the Group of 20 (G20) recommendation to use them to improve crossborder payments will boost adoption further, as this would make payees and payers more identifiable.
“We’ve seen payments systems adopting the LEI as a main identifier — the UK CHAPS system, for example,” Kech said. “The new CHAPS system with ISO 20022 messaging is actually identifying the payer and payee, as well as the direct participants in the system, with LEIs.”
From May 1 this year, the Bank of England will mandate LEIs for all payments between financial institutions. The Bank said it aims to widen the LEI requirement to all CHAPS payments over time, citing the potential benefits for resolution planning; financial crime detection; sanctions screening; customer due diligence; and products and services innovation.