The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a globally standardised identification code for legal entities. It enables companies and organisations to be uniquely identified across countries and register systems and plays an important role particularly in financial markets and regulatory environments.
In detail, the LEI is a globally unique, 20-character alphanumeric identification code for legal entities. It was developed to enable the unambiguous identification of companies and organisations – regardless of company names, language or national company registers.
Especially in international business relationships, regulatory reporting or financial transactions, the LEI ensures that companies can be clearly assigned and confusion can be avoided. LEIs are issued and managed in accordance with the international ISO 17442 standard.
Practical relevance: Company names can change, may exist more than once or may be spelled differently in different countries. For financial institutions, supervisory authorities and companies, the company name alone is therefore often not sufficient.
The LEI provides a globally unique reference and facilitates, among other things:
- the identification of companies in financial markets,
- regulatory reporting,
- international business relationships,
- risk analyses and due diligence reviews, and
- the unambiguous identification of business partners.
LEI in the FinAPU Firmenbuch
The FinAPU Firmenbuch displays the LEI – where available – in a structured format together with other company information.
This includes, among other things:
- commercial register number (Firmenbuchnummer)
- EUID
- company name and company status
- management and representation rights
- proceedings status
- available annual financial statements
By bringing this information together in a structured format, the FinAPU Firmenbuch provides a sound basis for analysis and decision-making.
