--- title: "LEI: unique worldwide, decisive both ways" summary: "One legal entity: the party that can enter a contract, not a brand, a division, a trading name or a group. A subsidiary with its own legal personality holds its own LEI and is a different entity from its parent, which is the property that makes the identifier useful and the property that surprises people who expected it to name a company in the colloquial sense." canonical_url: https://entitybind.com/identifiers/lei last_updated: 2026-10-15 copy: full --- # LEI: unique worldwide, decisive both ways > One legal entity: the party that can enter a contract, not a brand, a division, a trading name or a group. A subsidiary with its own legal personality holds its own LEI and is a different entity from its parent, which is the property that makes the identifier useful and the property that surprises people who expected it to name a company in the colloquial sense. Canonical page: https://entitybind.com/identifiers/lei Last updated: 2026-10-15 ## Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) An agreeing value settles the pair on its own, in the stage that compares identifiers and calls no model. One legal entity: the party that can enter a contract, not a brand, a division, a trading name or a group. A subsidiary with its own legal personality holds its own LEI and is a different entity from its parent, which is the property that makes the identifier useful and the property that surprises people who expected it to name a company in the colloquial sense. - Decides a match on its own: Yes - Issued or derived by us: Never - Failure modes below: 4 - Identifier systems compared: 8 in total - When identifiers are compared: Decides a pair Test it on your own column: A first file carries this column and whatever else your export has. Back comes the rows it settled, the rows it could not, and for those, the column that would have. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) Unique within: Global. One LEI is unique across every jurisdiction at once, which is true of nothing else on this page. By [James Rooney](https://entitybind.com/about), founder of Entity Bind · Last revised 15 October 2026 ## What your LEI column does in Entity Bind An agreeing LEI settles the pair on its own and two LEIs that disagree settle it the other way, in the first rule of the stage that compares identifier values and calls no model. Send it as `lei`. It is supplied by the live GLEIF source and carried in the crosswalk — the table that lists every identifier held for one entity — as its own scheme. A record arriving with an LEI reaches its answer at the cheapest stage of the cascade: no model call, no egress, one credit. Your own column will carry gaps and typos the specimen does not, and a few hundred rows will show how much of your file it still settles. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## Issuer, shape and a specimen Every row below is checkable in another tab: the body that assigns the identifier, the exact shape including any check digits, and a specimen value. Where we hold a value we have verified against the issuing body, the specimen is that value; where we do not, it is a shape, labelled as one. - Issued by: [The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)](https://www.gleif.org/en/organizational-identity/lei-vlei/the-legal-entity-identifier-lei), through accredited Local Operating Units that do the actual issuing and annual renewal. - Unique within: Global. One LEI is unique across every jurisdiction at once, which is true of nothing else on this page. - Format: Twenty characters, upper-case letters and digits, defined by [ISO 17442](https://www.gleif.org/en/organizational-identity/lei-vlei/the-legal-entity-identifier-lei). Characters 1–4 are the issuing Local Operating Unit's prefix, 5–6 are reserved zeros, 7–18 identify the entity, and 19–20 are two check characters computed from the other eighteen under ISO 7064 MOD 97-10. That check pair means a mistyped LEI is almost always detectable without asking anybody. - What one value identifies: One legal entity: the party that can enter a contract, not a brand, a division, a trading name or a group. A subsidiary with its own legal personality holds its own LEI and is a different entity from its parent, which is the property that makes the identifier useful and the property that surprises people who expected it to name a company in the colloquial sense. - Specimen: 213800TB53ELEUKM7Q61 — Vodafone Group Public Limited Company, as the record stands in GLEIF's own published file. ## What goes wrong with LEI The failure modes that decide whether this column is worth sending, and what each one costs you once it turns up in a live file. Worth reading before you plan an integration around the column. 01. Two LEIs that disagree settle the pair the other way, with no name check applied in either direction. An LEI identifies exactly one legal entity globally, so agreement and conflict are both decisive on their own. The scorer carries the same conclusion as a weight: a conflicting LEI is held at −20.0365 in the log-odds it adds up, a magnitude chosen so that a pair with every positively weighted feature firing at once still lands below the accept threshold. 02. Most companies in any register hold no LEI. Absence is therefore evidence of nothing at all, and a pipeline that treats a missing LEI as a signal is reading its own coverage gap as a fact about the company. 03. GLEIF records are self-reported by the entity and graded for it. Each carries a corroboration level, so an uncorroborated self-reported legal name is demoted below one filed at the register of incorporation rather than trusted equally. The register of incorporation wins on the legal name, always, and the code enforces that ordering. 04. The fitted weights offer no support for the agreeing direction: `lei_match` has zero labelled observations in the gold set — the pairs a human has judged — and is held at 5.5000 rather than fitted. The stage that compares identifier values decides on an agreeing LEI before the scorer is consulted at all, so the held weight is a safety floor rather than a measurement. Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. If one of those is already in your file, a sample turns it into a number of rows instead of a suspicion. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## The other identifiers on a company record 4 of the 8 settle a pair on their own; the other 4 narrow the field and hand the decision on. If your file carries more than one of them, the question worth settling is which one is doing the work. - [Company number](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/company-number) (Decides a match): Company registration number - [CIK](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/cik) (Does not decide): Central Index Key - [Ticker](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/ticker) (Does not decide): Exchange ticker symbol - [SIREN / SIRET](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/siren-siret) (Decides a match): SIREN and SIRET - [D-U-N-S](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/duns) (Decides a match): Data Universal Numbering System number - [VAT number](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/vat-number) (Does not decide): VAT registration number - [EUID](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/euid) (Does not decide): European Unique Identifier Or try your own rows: create your Free workspace and upload a company CSV to inspect the decisions and receipts. Where a further column would settle an unresolved row, it names that column; contact us for an assisted review. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## Where LEI shows up elsewhere The rest of the answer, on the shelves that hold it. Each card names its own — a register, a definition, a guide or a comparison — and opens on the page that carries it at length. - [United Kingdom](https://entitybind.com/coverage/united-kingdom) (Also listed by): Companies House under the Open Government Licence v3.0, storable and resellable. The register every published tier rate on this site was recorded on. - [LEI (Legal Entity Identifier)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/lei) (Definition): The LEI is a 20-character ISO 17442 code identifying a legal entity that participates in financial transactions, issued through the Global LEI Foundation and published as open reference data. - [Deterministic matching](https://entitybind.com/glossary/deterministic-matching) (Definition): Deterministic matching decides a pair by an explicit rule — usually agreement on a strong identifier — and produces the same verdict every time with no score in between. - [Crosswalk](https://entitybind.com/glossary/crosswalk) (Definition): A crosswalk is a mapping between the identifier schemes that name the same company in different systems — LEI to company number to CIK to ticker — so that data joined on one key can be joined to data keyed on another. - [What is an LEI?](https://entitybind.com/guides/what-is-an-lei) (Guide): The Legal Entity Identifier explained: the twenty-character structure and its check digits, GLEIF and the LOUs, Level 1 and Level 2 data, annual renewal and lapse, and what a lapsed LEI means for matching. - [Company identifiers explained](https://entitybind.com/guides/company-identifiers-explained) (Guide): Company number, LEI, CIK, ticker, SIREN and SIRET, DUNS, VAT, EUID and ISIN. What each identifies, who issues it, what it does not guarantee, and which ones actually decide a match. - [The DORA register of information](https://entitybind.com/guides/dora-register-of-information) (Guide): What the register demands, why only 6.5% of almost 1,000 dry-run registers passed all 116 data quality checks, and the provider identity problem that explains most of the failures. - [LSEG PermID](https://entitybind.com/compare/lseg-permid) (Comparison): Free permanent identifiers, and largely unrivalled in capital markets. We do not issue them. ## Sources The bodies and records this page quotes about LEI, each with the caveat that travels with it. - [GLEIF, “The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)”](https://www.gleif.org/en/organizational-identity/lei-vlei/the-legal-entity-identifier-lei): The operator of the system, describing the twenty-character code and the four ISO 17442 principles it adheres to. It is GLEIF's account of the standard rather than the standard's own text. - [CC0 1.0 Universal](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/): The dedication GLEIF publishes the LEI records under. Nothing is conditional on attribution, which is why that material can be stored and resold. ## Start with the column you are least sure of. Create your workspace, verify your email and run your first company file. The Free plan needs no card. Create API keys in your workspace when you need an integration. [Start free](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) · [See which registers we read](https://entitybind.com/coverage) 300 credits. No card. For a guided review of your file, explore [the Merge Safety Sprint](https://entitybind.com/audit-pack). ## Questions about LEI ### How should I check an LEI against my company row? For a fictional row named Tutorial Willow Ltd, keep the supplied LEI as text, look it up in the GLEIF API and compare the returned legal name, register authority and registration number with your row. Record the retrieved record URL and date. A different legal entity or a missing result needs review; a missing LEI is not evidence that the company does not exist. This is a manual verification recipe, not a claim of automatic completion. ### Does an LEI guarantee a correct match? An agreeing LEI decides the pair without a model call, and on the identifier input shape — a record carrying a company number or an LEI — Entity Bind measured 100% (317/317) on the 317-company representative fixture of 2026-08-29 — Historical results on an internal UK fixture with a preloaded catalogue. The September 5 replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot establish current calibration. No independent customer holdout or global coverage claim. Two things bound that. The fixture is 317 live GB companies drawn from one register's own snapshot, so it measures an input shape rather than warranting your file; and the guarantee belongs to the identifier system rather than to us, because an LEI names one legal entity globally by construction. What Entity Bind adds is what happens to a near miss: an LEI that disagrees is a decisive non-match, and a pair whose LEIs are absent falls through to the stages that have to work for their answer. ### Can Entity Bind give me an LEI for a company that does not have one? No, and nobody can. An LEI is assigned by an accredited Local Operating Unit when the entity applies and pays for it; there is no way to derive one from a company's public record, and a vendor who returns an LEI for an entity that has never registered for one is returning a guess. What we can do is tell you which of your rows do hold one, cite the GLEIF record it came from, and say plainly which came back with nothing — which is a different answer from an entity we never asked about, and the payload distinguishes the two rather than returning a shared null. --- Entity Bind resolves companies and organisations only. It does not resolve people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions exposure, emissions or geolocation, and its results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. This is the Markdown copy of https://entitybind.com/identifiers/lei, assembled from the same data the page renders and carrying every sentence, table row, figure and question the page's main content carries. The HTML page is canonical; it adds the layout, the navigation and the interactive parts (the ask panel, the forms), which a copy can name but not run. Every page on the site, with a line on each: https://entitybind.com/llms.txt.