GLEIF, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation, is the not-for-profit body that manages the Global LEI System and publishes every LEI record in one open index. It does not issue LEIs. Accredited LEI issuers, known as Local Operating Units, issue and manage the codes, while registration agents such as LEI24 help legal entities apply through an accredited issuer. Established by the Financial Stability Board in 2014 and supervised under Swiss law, the foundation sits behind the identifier rather than in front of it, which is why most companies encounter it indirectly, through an issuer, a bank or a counterparty check.
GLEIF at a Glance
GLEIF is often mistaken for a regulator or an issuer, and its formal particulars explain why it is neither.
| Full legal name | Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) |
| Established | June 2014 |
| Established by | The Financial Stability Board |
| Legal form | Not-for-profit foundation under Swiss law |
| Headquarters | Basel, Switzerland |
| Global LEI System oversight | LEI Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) |
| Swiss legal supervision | Swiss Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations |
| Core responsibilities | Accrediting and monitoring LEI issuers, operating the Global LEI Index, managing data quality, maintaining the system’s technical and governance infrastructure |
| Does it issue LEIs? | No. Accredited LEI issuers do |
What Does GLEIF Do?
GLEIF accredits the organisations that issue LEIs and monitors how they perform afterwards. It operates the Global LEI Index, the single public record of every LEI ever assigned, and runs the data quality programme that measures whether those records stay current and corroborated against authoritative sources. Alongside both, the foundation maintains the technical and governance infrastructure the system depends on, including the vLEI ecosystem. Standards development belongs elsewhere: ISO develops and maintains ISO 17442, and GLEIF operates the system built around that standard.
Accrediting and Monitoring LEI Issuers
Accreditation is the gate into the Global LEI System. An organisation applying to become an LEI issuer must demonstrate that it validates entity data against authoritative registers, meets defined service levels, protects the records it holds and reports them in the required formats. GLEIF assesses that capability jurisdiction by jurisdiction, so an issuer is accredited to serve specific markets rather than the world at large. Performance reporting and periodic review continue for as long as the issuer operates. Around 40 organisations held accreditation in August 2026, and GLEIF’s directory of accredited LEI issuers shows the current list alongside the jurisdictions each one covers.
Data Quality and Annual Renewal
To stay in ISSUED status, an active entity’s reference data normally has to be revalidated at least once a year by its managing issuer, which confirms the legal name, registered address and registration details against the source register. Records that have been retired, annulled or flagged as duplicates fall outside that cycle. The holder carries the obligation to respond, because an issuer cannot revalidate details the entity has not confirmed, so renewing or updating an LEI starts with the entity rather than with GLEIF. Results are published every quarter: renewal rates across the Global LEI System reached 57.1% in the second quarter of 2026.
Does GLEIF Issue LEI Numbers?
No part of the application process runs through the foundation. An accredited LEI issuer, also called a Local Operating Unit, receives the application, validates the entity against its registration authority, assigns the 20-character code and manages the record for as long as it stays active. Registration agents work alongside that issuer, handling the application, the supporting documents, renewals and day-to-day contact, while validation and issuance remain with the issuer. LEI24 operates as a registration agent, so a UK company applying for an LEI number deals with us while the accredited issuer performs the validation.
Fees follow the same division of labour. LEI issuers pay GLEIF a fee for each LEI issued or renewed, under a cost-recovery model that funds the operation of the system. Retail prices belong to issuers and registration agents, which is why LEI number costs differ between providers for what is the same registered identifier. Our published prices are all-inclusive, with no separate GLEIF fee added to the customer price.
The GLEIF Database: Inside the Global LEI Index
What businesses tend to call the GLEIF database is formally the Global LEI Index, the authoritative central repository of current and historical LEI records. It is published openly, updated daily and free to search or download in bulk. More than 3.1 million active LEIs sat in the index at the end of the second quarter of 2026, with the total population including retired records above 3.35 million. Company records are joined by funds, charities, government bodies and trusts that hold an LEI, since the index covers any legal entity issued a code. GLEIF aggregates what accredited issuers submit, applies its quality checks and publishes the result, so every record traces back to the issuer that validated it.
Level 1 and Level 2 Data
Level 1 answers who is who: legal name, registered address, legal form, the registration authority and the entity’s number in that register, plus the status and dates attached to the record itself. Level 2 answers who owns whom, recording direct and ultimate parent relationships where they apply and where the information is available. Where a parent is not disclosed, Level 2 relationship data carries a reporting exception setting out the reason, so a gap is documented rather than silent.
A compliance team onboarding a counterparty reads both levels before signing anything. For a UK company, Level 1 shows its Companies House registration details together with the LEI record’s validation and renewal information. Level 2 shows reported direct and ultimate accounting-consolidating parent relationships where applicable.
What an LEI Record Status Tells You
Three statuses cover most of what a business will meet in practice.
| Status | What it means | What it means for a firm relying on it |
| ISSUED | The LEI is active and its reference data has been revalidated within the required cycle | The record is within its renewal cycle |
| LAPSED | The LEI exists, but renewal is overdue and the data has not been revalidated | The code still identifies the entity, though the details may be stale, and several reporting regimes treat lapsed records as non-conforming |
| RETIRED | The entity has ceased to exist, following a merger, dissolution or similar event | The record remains public as history, and no new activity should be reported against it |
Further values exist for annulled and duplicate records. The index is the underlying dataset and a lookup tool is an interface onto it, so our LEI search tool and any other search built on the same source read the same reference data.
Who Oversees GLEIF and the Global LEI System?
Two separate arrangements sit above the foundation, and confusing them accounts for most of the uncertainty about who is in charge. One is public oversight of the system itself, exercised by a committee of regulators from around the world. The other is Swiss law, which governs GLEIF as a legal entity through the supervision applying to any foundation registered in the country.
The Regulatory Oversight Committee
The LEI Regulatory Oversight Committee brings together public authorities from jurisdictions worldwide, among them central banks, securities regulators and finance ministries. It oversees the Global LEI System and sets the policy standards the system operates under. GLEIF took over accreditation of LEI issuers in October 2015, under a memorandum of understanding with the ROC. Before that date the committee endorsed issuers directly, and those organisations were known as pre-LOUs.
GLEIF’s Board and Swiss Foundation Status
A Board of Directors drawn from across the public and private sector governs the foundation, with members appointed for their expertise rather than as delegates of a market or a country. GLEIF has no shareholders and no members. A Swiss foundation is an endowed purpose rather than an owned company, and the Swiss Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations supervises it accordingly, checking that the foundation acts within its stated purpose and manages its finances properly.
Why Was GLEIF Created?
The Financial Stability Board established GLEIF in June 2014, acting on the framework the G20 endorsed after the 2008 financial crisis. Regulators unwinding the collapse of large cross-border institutions found they could not reliably tell which legal entity sat behind a given transaction. The same firm appeared under different names in different systems, subsidiaries were hard to distinguish from parents, and exposures could not be totalled across borders without slow manual reconciliation. One identifier, assigned once and recognised everywhere, answered the problem, and a permanent body was needed to run it.
The identifier itself is a 20-character alphanumeric code defined by ISO 17442, unique to a single legal entity and never reused, and that fixed structure is what allows an LEI number to serve as a permanent reference point across registers and reporting systems.
What GLEIF Means for UK Businesses
A UK business that needs an LEI needs it because of a rule made elsewhere. Obligations arise under UK MiFIR, UK EMIR, or from a counterparty whose own reporting duties mean it will not trade or onboard without one. Which businesses need an LEI number is settled by the rules attached to a firm’s activity, not by the foundation, which imposes none of them and holds no regulatory authority in the United Kingdom.
Verification is where the foundation matters. The Global LEI Index is the authoritative source an identifier resolves against, whether a firm queries it directly, works from the daily download or relies on a data vendor maintaining its own copy. The FCA is explicit about the consequence: firms subject to UK MiFIR transaction reporting will not be able to execute a trade for a client that is eligible for an LEI and does not hold one. The reporting regime identifies both sides, since FCA transaction reporting records the client on whose behalf a trade is executed alongside the firm that executes it.
GLEIF and the vLEI Ecosystem
The verifiable LEI is the cryptographically verifiable form of the same identifier: a digital credential that lets an organisation, or a person acting for it, prove who they are to a machine without a manual document check. GLEIF governs the ecosystem through its vLEI Ecosystem Governance Framework, qualifies the organisations permitted to issue vLEI credentials and operates the root of trust the whole chain resolves back to.
Adoption remains at an early stage. Eight organisations held Qualified vLEI Issuer status in August 2026, and the credentials appear in pilots and specific regulated workflows rather than across the wider LEI population.
Frequently Asked Questions About GLEIF
Is GLEIF a government agency?
No. GLEIF is a not-for-profit foundation under Swiss law, established by the Financial Stability Board and overseen by a committee of public authorities rather than run by any single government.
Can a business choose any GLEIF-accredited LEI issuer?
An entity may use any issuer accredited to serve its jurisdiction, wherever that issuer is based. Accreditation is granted market by market, so coverage differs from one issuer to another.
Who do I contact if my LEI data is wrong?
Contact the LEI issuer managing your record, as it holds and corrects the reference data. Any data user may also submit a challenge through GLEIF’s Challenge LEI Data facility.
