In line with its vision to enable broader, automated use of the LEI, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has enhanced its LEI search engine with rich data functionality and published a companion API enabling third-party developers to automate searches and retrieve open, higher quality LEI data from within their application environments.

“The value delivered by the LEI search engine is growing as the use of the LEI system expands around the world, both as an oversight tool for regulators fighting financial crime and as a comprehensive means of establishing cross-border counterparty verification for businesses,” comments Stephan Wolf, CEO, Global LEI Foundation. “Now any person or organization anywhere can retrieve rich historical data about a legal entity’s corporate development and ownership, automatically, from within their own application. This increased functionality and accessibility makes the LEI search engine more powerful and convenient than ever before.”

By expanding the number of search parameters available, LEI Search 2.0 delivers a new level of  transparency over how legal entities have evolved over time, enabling faster and more sophisticated counterparty due diligence, heightened granularity in regulatory oversight procedures and richer reporting potential for market data aggregators. These benefits are made possible thanks to the new option to view historical changes to any data field of an LEI, from 2018 onwards. This change log data includes the date of each LEI update, which data field has been altered together with the previous value and the new value.

LEI Search 2.0 is delivered together with a companion API giving third-party developers access to the full range of search functionality from within their own application environments. This enables a broad range of organizations to set up fast, customized, and automated searches in support of a wide variety of LEI data use-cases globally. The GLEIF API also makes available further related data, including reference data of LEI issuers, code lists used in LEI records and mapped identifiers like BIC or ISIN codes.

Migration to LEI Search 2.0 was completed on 1^st January. All functionality is fully operational and open to users worldwide via the GLEIF website. Use of the companion API is free of charge and does not require registration. The API and adjacent documentation are also available on the GLEIF website at www.gleif.org.