The DTCC and Swift have trumped 13 other Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) registration authorities in Q3 2014 rankings compiled by Tabb Group and Alacra for data consistency and uniformity.
LEIs are required by global financial regulators to better identify firms and counterparties engaged in financial transactions.
Tabb’s rankings compare LEI providers on the consistency and uniformity of their LEI data as aggregated by the P-LEI.org reference data portal. Alacra added more in-depth analysis of LEI quality, comparing issued LEIs against the body of global rated, regulated and listed counterparties and entities that should have an LEI.
While the DTCC/Swift venture emerged at the top of the file, the study points up challenges for the industry, as the number of relevant institutions identified shows few signs of growth.
Currently only 15% of entities with a credit rating, 15% of entities that are listed on global exchanges, 17% of organisations with a Swift BIC code and 51% of European Banking Association entities have an LEI, says Alacra’s Alan Samuels, vice president, reference data solutions.
“The LEI process continues to face challenges," he says. "While many are properly set up, a large percentage of them were issued to organisations not engaged in financial markets transactions, let alone complex derivatives transactions that LEIs were developed to track.”