The FTA will amend financial services laws to make data reported to financial regulators electronically searchable and to further enable the development of RegTech and Artificial Intelligence applications.

The legislation is intended to put the United States on a path towards a comprehensive, standardized and harmonized reporting framework to reduce the private sector's regulatory compliance burden, while enhancing transparency and accountability. The ACT, in last year's introduction in the House called for a standard legal entity identifier, yet failed to endorse the global LEI, a specific identifier that was initiated by US regulatory agencies and endorsed by leading financial industry trade associations.

Total LEIs issued was 1,858,136 at month end April. Newly issued LEIs this month was 18,470 vs. last month’s 22,166, somewhat below the monthly average of last year of 19,364. This month’s non-renewal (lapsed) LEIs were 13,663, significantly lower than last month’s 19,981 and also lower than last year’s monthly average of 18,778. An overall lapsed rate comparing total non-renewed LEIs to total issued LEIs remained for the second month at 32.7%, a bit over the 32.5% of the prior month.

The text of the ACT has not yet been published. Therefore we are calling on all US trade associations that endorsed the LEI at its inception nearly a decade ago to step up and lobby Congress to include the LEI in the new legislation.