EDITOR’ S QUESTION

the Global LEI Index, a data bank maintained by GLEIF and made available to everyone, everywhere, free of charge.

As of Q1 2025, there are over 2.71 million active LEIs globally. The result is unprecedented transparency into the identities and ownership structures of businesses which was so painfully absent in 2008.

The crisis shattered trust in financial institutions and created uncertainty that paralysed markets around the world. Two fundamental questions emerged: How did this happen? How can we prevent it from happening again?

The crisis was caused, at least in part, by the opacity of the global financial system. When the first banks showed signs of trouble in 2007, their counterparties struggled to assess their exposure. After Lehman Brothers collapsed, regulators couldn’ t assess the resultant impact because no global standards existed for identifying and linking financial data representing entities or instruments. This inability to identify parties engaged in transactions across markets, products and regions was preventing them from evaluating emerging, systemic risks.

In response, leaders from the world’ s largest economies, operating through the G20 and the Financial Stability Board, agreed to develop the Legal Entity Identifier( LEI), a standardised and universal means of identifying legal entities engaged in financial transactions and other official interactions. The LEI is 20-digit alphanumeric code connected to a verified business registration and information record held in

Since its inception over 10 years ago, word of the LEI’ s utility has spread across the globe. Its unique capacity to create trust and transparency has been recognised as valuable across all sectors, giving business entities the capability to confirm the legitimacy of trading partners and to establish themselves as universally recognised across borders.

Today, GLEIF envisions a future where every business has a verifiable trusted global identity – the LEI – which is hardwired into all relationships and transactions. This will deliver value for individual organisations by easing international trade and, more broadly, will accelerate economic growth. Vitally, it will also help to address a range of global challenges including, among others, financial, corporate and digital fraud, financial exclusion, friction in international capital flows, the burden of environmental compliance, money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Trust in the global marketplace cannot exist without transparency. This is one of many hard lessons the world has learned from the 2008 financial crash. Happily, it is one that has been learned well. x

THE RESULT IS UNPRECEDENTED TRANSPARENCY INTO THE IDENTITIES AND OWNERSHIP STRUCTURES OF BUSINESSES WHICH WAS SO PAINFULLY ABSENT IN 2008. www. intelligentcxo. com

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