On 27 July 2023, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (“DTCC”) announced its decision to exit the Global Markets Entity Identifier (“GMEI”) business by 22 August 2023. Through its GMEI business, DTCC issued Legal Entity Identifiers (“LEIs”) in more than 140 jurisdictions, representing approximately a 50 percent share of all LEIs issued worldwide. LEIs are a unique global identifier assigned to a specific legal entity. As part of the financial crisis regulatory reform, LEIs are required to be provided on most financial transactions, including derivatives transactions, to identify legal entities and their financial transactions in a globally accessible database.

As part of the wind down, which is less than four weeks, DTCC has partnered with the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (“GLEIF”) to follow GLEIF’s established process for exiting Local Operating Units (“LOUs”). This collaboration aims to assist with the seamless transition of all LEIs to new managing LOUs.

GLEIF will oversee the wind down of GMEI and the transfer of LEIs, with the intention to ensure LEI service continuity for impacted legal entities and the completion of a risk-reduced and cost-efficient LEI bulk transfer for the Global LEI System. GLEIF will coordinate the transfer of LEIs on a jurisdictional basis to different LOUs. DTCC will support this process through its wholly owned subsidiary, Business Entity Data (BED) B.V (“BED”).

Effective 27 July 2023 at 5:00pm (EDT), BED terminated all LEI services and the GMEI client portal is now closed. The GLEIF LEI management transfer process will run from 27 July 2023 to 22 August 2023. DTCC will notify all clients of the destination LOU for their LEIs. Firms are not required to submit transfer request forms as the transition will be an automated process.

Any LEIs that are set to expire during the transition period will be extended automatically to 12 September 2023. Renewals beyond the automatic extension will be processed with the new LOUs that are taking over servicing of the relevant LEIs.

DTCC has published Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”) to help existing clients to identify their new LEI provider and clarify other operational matters. The FAQs and DTCC’s client notice are available here and here respectively. Further information on the GLEIF LEI issuer offboarding process is available here.