OREANDA-NEWS. October 01, 2014. The PBC has been working to promote the creation of a domestic system for Legal Entity Identifier to keep up with the progress of the global LEI system. Recently The China Legal Entity Identifier System (LEICN) has been formally launched and is providing registration services for Chinese financial institutions.

The global community has turned their attention to financial regulation as a result of the global financial crisis that broke out in 2008. In order to build a unified international framework for financial regulation and improve the capacity to identify systemic financial risks worldwide, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) put forward the initiative of building a global Legal Entity Identifier system in July 2011, to allocate a unique code to every financial institution that participate in global financial transactions.

The G20 endorsed the LEI initiative. In June 2012, the FSB started the work to build a global LEI system, establishing a LEI Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC) in January 2013 and a Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF) in June 2014. Up till now, some advanced economies including the U.S., U.K., and Germany have established their own domestic LEI system, while India, Japan, Korea and other Asian countries are promoting the LEI registration and data management in their own countries.

The PBC, as an important member of the LEI ROC, has been working actively to keep pace with the progress of the global LEI system, and implement the LEI Initiative in China by establishing a domestic channel for the registration of financial institutions. The China Legal Entity Identifier System will provide LEI assignment and registration, annual review, LEI data updating, the porting of LEI data from other local operating units, enquiries and responses, LEI data enquiry and downloading, and other services, process LEI assignment applications, and satisfy the various LEI-related demand from Chinese financial institutions that participate in global transactions. The establishment of the LEICN is expected to facilitate the information management by domestic financial institutions. Furthermore, it is of great significance for China to actively participate in and increase its voice in international financial matters.