SUNGARD VIEWPOINT: LEI Snapshot

Contributor: SunGard Viewpoint

Q&A with Tony Scianna, deputy head of strategy, SunGard’s capital markets business

Q: Tell us a bit about what’s happening with the industry’s global legal entity identifier project. What should we watch for around LEI?

A: The CFTC’s approval of the legal entity identifier project is a great step in moving forward with the LEI in the U.S., and this will hopefully look similar abroad. The LEI project is a great example of industry groups around the world working together to come up with effective compliance solutions for some of the regulatory changes and reporting requirements that are being implemented globally. One of the biggest challenges is the need to be able to report in the same manner across firms, so creating the LEI to define the clients from their legal entity perspective creates a much-needed standard for that type of reporting. This is extremely important because traditionally, firms have tended to report what is on the books by individual accounts, not necessarily by the accounts that these may roll up into.

The legal entity identifier project is a positive step forward. The regulatory bodies both in the U.S. and abroad are starting to explore these issues, working with the recommendations of industry sources and groups to develop solutions that will benefit the industry in a very real manner on a global scale.

Going forward, I think we are going to see more and more regulatory reporting agencies agreeing with the LEI, and more of the reporting requirements coming out from those groups will specifically address the LEI as a reporting requirement. I believe that the industry as a whole will benefit from having a new standard for reporting on account-level information, which has been a driver of many of the regulatory changes taking place.

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