Who is an LEI Registration Agent?
An LEI Registration Agent’s role is to help legal entities, who are looking to obtain an LEI number. The concept of Registration Agents was introduced by GLEIF to further streamline the issuance of LEIs.
Registration Agents’ success is solely determined by their ability to offer competitive prices and simplify the LEI registration or renewal process for their clients.
Global Legal Entity System (GLEIS)
In response to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the Group of Twenty (G20) called on the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to provide recommendations for a global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and a supporting governance structure. This gave rise to the development of the Global LEI System, which, through the issuance of LEIs, now provides unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions across the globe.
Global Legal Entity Foundation (GLEIF)
From there, a not-for-profit organization, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), was created, to support the implementation and use of the LEI. GLEIF services are in charge of establishing operational integrity within the Global LEI System.
Local Operating Unit (LOU)
LEIs are issued by authorized organizations called Local Operating Units (LOUs). You’ll find a list of LEI issuing organizations on the GLEIF website.
Registration Agent
To further streamline the issuance of LEIs, GLEIF introduced the concept of the Registration Agent. Their role is to help legal entities like you, looking to obtain an LEI number. Registration Agents success is determined by the efficiency of their systems and by how well they can simplify and accommodate the LEI registration or renewal process for their clients.
LEI issuing organizations’ Registration Agents are listed under each LEI issuing organization’s basic information on the GLEIF website.
LEI pricing structure
The fees charged for the issuance and maintenance of an LEI are entirely a matter of the LOU or Registration Agent. The Global LEI System (GLEIS) has been set up so that the LEI cost can differ among various service providers. This is done to encourage healthy competition and benefit the end customer. Since the number needs to be updated yearly – the costs will start to add up. For this reason, we encourage you to pay close attention to the price and take it as the primary factor when registering an LEI number.
What you often don’t hear about LEIs, is that the organization’s charging structure determines the LEI prices and has nothing to do with the value of the LEI number itself. The code is simply a tool that enables you to easily identify legal entities, that are active in the financial market.
To keep the GLEIF running, they surcharge 11 USD per LEI application for 1 year. The next organization to add to the price is an LEI issuer, an LOU. Last in line is a Registration Agent, whose prices are often determined by the cost of the LEI they receive from their LOU.
How are LEI Register’s prices so low?
LEI Register is an official Registration Agent – we have been helping legal entities apply for new LEI numbers or transfer and renew existing LEI numbers since early 2018. We have successfully pursued our goal of making the LEI registration process simple, automated, fast, and affordable. At LEI Register, we keep our profit margins low and believe in building long-term business relationships.
We process your registration data in cooperation with our GLEIF-accredited partner LOU Ubisecure Oy (RapidLEI).