LEI Issuance Flirts with Real Time

The launch of API access to RapidLEI, Ubisecure’s Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) service, has opened the door to same-session issuance. 

Steve Roylance, senior vice president of identity services at Ubisecure Group, says RapidLEI already slashes turnaround time through its automated approach. Traditionally, entities applying to obtain an LEI fill out a form, a process Roylance says has high potential for errors because required information, such as legal address or parentage, is often unclear and lacking standards. He says RapidLEI functions like common online retail forms where the user inputs their post code and the interface finds the full address. 

“We pull off the data from the company registry,” he says, referring to the organizations where entities register to become legal businesses. “Most of the time, it stops people from having to do the form filling and we get more accurate information because we’re going directly to the registry. We can go a lot faster because it removes one of the checks we would ordinarily have to do, to go to registry and get that data to compare with what was input for the [LEI] form. My first LEI took seven days and there were still errors in it.”

The API, Roylance says, provides simple front-end access to the existing registry data-based system and is aimed at large-volume clients. “So a bank has a customer that wants to do a trade, but the customer doesn’t have an LEI. The bank can issue one very quickly to that customer—that keeps them happy rather than having to wait 24 hours or longer,” he says. 

Roylance says RapidLEI is issuing identifiers as fast as “sub-99 seconds—a little quicker with the API,” because it issues a number immediately then does the data checks, and “assuming the [application] information is good, that will continue to be the LEI number.”

RapidLEI has humans doing final checks, after which they run it against the identifier data contained in the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) system. “GLEIF is fantastic with all data quality services they’re offering to LOU [Local Operating Unit, the official LEI issuers] partners,” he says. 

The company’s API pricing is dependent on region and volume.

Roylance says gathering the registry data can be challenging, especially in areas such as Germany, where registries are based on the court system and there are more than 100, or Barbados, where there is no online database and “everything is scanned PDFs, so you’re taking that scanned document, handwritten, and converting it to an LEI, and getting all that data to be consistent and correct.”

In fact, he says that is why the LEI system exists, to address diversity across business registries worldwide, in terms of numbering, formats, data captured and company types. 

“That’s why LEI had to be overlaid on top off all this, to make sense of all those different numbering formats. Our job as an LOU is to be able to take all of those disparate company types and formats and get all that data to be consistent and correct.” 

Roylance says the LEI system helps address those challenges because it allocates registry authority numbers that are included in the GLEIF data: “When you search for an LEI number on the GLEIF system, it tells you exactly where the business registry is [and] where the underlying data came from.” 

The LEI is a 20-digit, alphanumeric code that has been mandatory for European counterparties since Mifid II came into force. The goal of the identifer is to provide the unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions.