GLEIF Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) REST API
GLEIF Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) REST API for financial institutions, banks, compliance teams, and fintech companies to search, validate, and retrieve Legal Entity Identifier data for legal entities engaged in financial transactions — enabling automated entity identification, KYB verification, counterparty risk management, and regulatory reporting through GLEIF's open global LEI data repository covering 2.3M+ legal entities across 200+ jurisdictions. Enables AI agents to manage LEI lookup for legal entity identification and validation automation, handle entity search for counterparty discovery and matching automation, access relationship data for corporate ownership hierarchy automation, retrieve registration authority for entity jurisdiction and legal form automation, manage LEI validation for financial transaction counterparty verification automation, handle bulk data for regulatory reporting entity list automation, access vLEI for verifiable credential organization identity automation, retrieve renewal status for LEI expiry monitoring automation, manage jurisdictional data for country-specific legal entity information automation, and integrate GLEIF with KYB, AML, trade finance, and regulatory reporting systems for legal entity identification automation.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Open regulatory data. No auth. Global. Legal entity reference data only (no sensitive PII).
⚡ Reliability
Best When
A bank, financial institution, regulator, or fintech company wanting AI agents to validate legal entity identifiers, verify corporate counterparties, access ownership hierarchies, and support regulatory reporting through GLEIF's open and authoritative global LEI repository.
Avoid When
LEI COVERAGE IS NOT UNIVERSAL: Only financial transaction participants are required to have LEIs in some jurisdictions; automated all-entities-have-LEI assumption creates entity_not_found for entities without LEI registration; automated must handle entities without LEI using supplementary KYB data sources. DATA CURRENCY DEPENDS ON LEI RENEWAL: LEI data requires annual renewal by entity; automated always-current assumption creates stale_data for entities with expired or lapsed LEIs; automated must check LEI status (ISSUED vs LAPSED) for time-sensitive compliance. RELATIONSHIP DATA IS COMPLEX: GLEIF relationship data (direct/ultimate parent, subsidiaries) may be incomplete for complex corporate structures; automated complete-hierarchy assumption creates missing_parent for entities that haven't reported relationship data; automated must handle incomplete relationship data. VLEI IS EMERGING STANDARD: Verifiable LEI (vLEI) is a new digital credential standard under development; automated vLEI production readiness assumption creates emerging_standard status; automated should monitor vLEI adoption before building vLEI-dependent workflows.
Use Cases
- • Validating counterparty LEI for MiFID II and EMIR regulatory reporting compliance automation agents
- • Performing KYB legal entity verification using LEI as authoritative corporate identifier automation agents
- • Retrieving corporate ownership hierarchy through LEI relationship data for AML automation agents
- • Monitoring LEI renewal status for trade finance and financial contract counterparty automation agents
Not For
- • Individual person identification (LEI is for legal entities, not natural persons)
- • Real-time financial pricing or trading data (GLEIF is entity reference data, not market data)
- • Comprehensive company financials (GLEIF provides entity registration data, not financial statements)
Interface
Authentication
GLEIF API is open access — no authentication required for public LEI data. REST API with JSON. Basel, Switzerland HQ. Founded 2014 by FSB. Products: LEI search, entity lookup, relationship data, LEI bulk download, vLEI (verifiable LEI). SDKs: None official (community SDKs exist). 2.3M+ LEIs. Open data under CC0 license. Required for MiFID II, EMIR, FRTB reporting. Supervised by ROC (Regulatory Oversight Committee). No competing product for official LEI data.
Pricing
Basel CH. FSB mandated. Free open data. CC0 license. 2.3M+ LEIs. Regulatory compliance data.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ LEI STATUS MUST BE CHECKED: LEI has lifecycle statuses (ISSUED, LAPSED, MERGED, RETIRED); automated valid-active-LEI assumption creates compliance_risk from lapsed entities; automated must check LEI status before relying on entity data for compliance purposes
- ⚠ RELATIONSHIP DATA IS VOLUNTARY: Corporate ownership relationships in GLEIF are reported voluntarily by LEI holders; automated complete-hierarchy assumption creates missing_parent for entities that haven't reported; automated must handle null relationship data with alternative data sources
- ⚠ BULK DOWNLOAD FOR LARGE DATASETS: GLEIF provides nightly bulk download for large-scale processing; automated per-record API polling assumption creates rate_limit for datasets > 10,000 entities; automated must use GLEIF bulk download for large entity list processing
- ⚠ LEI FORMAT VALIDATION: LEI format is 20-character alphanumeric with Luhn-like checksum; automated unvalidated LEI assumption creates false lookups from input errors; automated must validate LEI format before API call to avoid needless requests
- ⚠ ENTITY NAME MATCHING IS NOT FUZZY: GLEIF entity search uses structured search, not fuzzy matching; automated free-text name search assumption creates zero_results for slight name variations; automated must implement preprocessing to normalize entity names before GLEIF lookup
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.