LEI and FIX the missing opportunity

As the instigation of Legal Entity identifiers (LEIs) gathers pace and designs are becoming cemented, the question of ownership and implementation is still to be answered. What has already been accepted is that LEI has to be a 'not for profit utility and be open with global access that has no latency in supplying new LEIs.

One perceived problem is that it is being pushed and implemented first in the USA, initially for derivatives, although the scope is expected to broaden to encompass all market products globally and become part of regulatory reporting requirements. So no worries about it being started in the USA providing it has both eyes on the global need, otherwise there will be an enormous opportunity lost.

However, talking about LEIs to a number of FIX protocol (FPL) chaps at the EMEA conference this week it sounds like FPL is not being utilised for LEI. This is a big mistake as in the last 16 years the success of FPL in creating and getting exponential growth in message standards has been just phenomenal. No one knows standards in financial markets better than the FPL guys and no organisation has a better track record of aligning the overall industry need with the business requirement.

I recommend that the LEI Trade Association Group and the DTCC and SWIFT include FPL in the industry rollout plans with some urgency. LEI would surely benefit from FPL inclusion and there is no doubt that lessons can be learned from FPL’s success