Legal Entity Identifier Accessibility: A Survey by the Trade Finance Program

Established in 2014 by the Group of Twenty (G20), the LEI is a unique, electronic, 20-digit standard identifier for legal entities, including financial institutions, corporations, governments, and companies. The brief promotes the uptake of the LEI system as a means to increase transparency in the global economy, thwart money laundering and terrorist financing, and help banks conduct due diligence. It also presents the results of a survey that ADB’s Trade Finance Program conducted to demonstrate that both large and small companies in developing countries can acquire an LEI relatively easily and at reasonable cost.