ISIN and LEI Mapping Project Kicks Off

When it comes to identifiers, it’s often hard to see the wood for the trees. To improve visibility, two of the largest issuing bodies have joined forces.

International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) and Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) are now linked as the result of an initiative to improve transparency and aid regulatory compliance. 

The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) collaborated on the nine-month project, culminating in the first file, issued on April 4. According to Emma Kalliomaki, managing director of ANNA and the Derivatives Service Bureau, the file includes more than 3.2 million ISIN-to-LEI records across roughly 25,000 unique LEIs. 

“Each National Numbering Agency (NNA) is responsible for the verification of each ISIN-to-LEI linkage,” Kalliomaki says. “These linkages are then fed into the ANNA Service Bureau, central ISIN database, from which a file is extracted and delivered to GLEIF.” 

According to ANNA, the file enables firms to aggregate data, in order to gain a clear view of their securities exposure for a given issuer and its related entities.

The daily file is available on the GLEIF website in Excel format, freely available to the public, Kalliomaki says, and is easily accessible and usable, requiring no special tools or expertise to integrate the data.  

ANNA and GLEIF teamed up to develop the mapping technology, and Kalliomaki says “each party has developed their elements of the solution with in-house expertise.” 

She says NNAs who have opted into the initiative carry the greatest cost of the project’s implementation and development, “given the time and effort required for the necessary verification of the linkages provided, as well as maintaining the data quality on an ongoing basis.” 

The goal of the initiative is to improve transparency of exposure by linking the legal issuing entity to their issuance of securities, plus to address some of the regulatory requirements under the Prospectus Directive, Central Securities Depositories Regulation, and SFTR.