eFIRDS – connecting European financial instruments with the Global LEI system

March 3^rd, 2021 – Oslo/ Ljubljana

Nordic Trustee and KDD today announce a new look-up tool enhancing transparency of LEI codes in the Global LEI System associated to financial instruments traded in the European Capital Markets.

The eFIRDS platform, available at efirds.eu , provides access to reference data and GLEIF data on all 48.000+ issuers and the +34 million financial instruments traded on the 460+ recognized trading venues in Europe. The platform brings a new way of transparency into European capital markets and will support legal entities and financial institutions with regulatory reporting requirements by facilitating GLEIF/LEI data mapped to financial instruments data from golden sources like the ‘European Securities and Markets Authority’ and ‘Financial Conduct Authority in the UK’ amongst others.

Nordic Trustee and the LOU, Central Securities and Clearing Corporation (KDD), have together developed the eFIRDS platform. KDD’s LOU GM, Iztok Clemenc, comments: “The LEI code and GLEIF data becomes increasingly important following the vast amount of European regulations requiring LEI codes to be reported by financial institutions involved in any kind of capital market transactions. The lack of access to reference data based on LEI codes linked to ISINs has up until now been a heavily debated topic as the data is not easily accessible and is costly to source, or is not accessible as some issuers still do not have a valid LEI codes. A talented team from Nordic Trustee and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology came up with the idea of doing something about it after consulting with key market participants in the Nordics. We fully supported it and joined the initiative, consequently the platform also supports LEI issuance/renewal features”.

Cato Holmsen, CEO Nordic Trustee, comments: “The eFIRDS platform makes LEI data attached to financial instruments easily available to a worldwide investment community and brings full transparency into legal entities equity and debt instruments in the European Capital markets”.

The platform also bridges the data issues and increased complexity following Brexit, as the U.K market subsequently are no longer available and included in the various EU registers. Aleksander Nervik, EVP digital Products, Nordic Trustee, comments: “Brexit means the huge London market is no longer provided in ESMA’s databases under MIFID II. As U.K have launched their own “Brexit-database” of financial instruments which financial institutions are required to integrate with, it means data are less transparent and increased complexity in terms of regulatory compliance. We simply thought it would be a good idea to bridge this issue by creating a single database that anyone can access to find legal entities and their financial instrument traded in Europe and provide additional value with the excessive company data available through the new, great GLEIF API”.

“These types of fintech initiatives will play a key part in making the LEI vision a reality. They contribute to growth across the entire financial ecosystem by making LEI data more accessible to relevant users which ultimately will benefit all stakeholders and the broader global capital markets”, Clemenc says.

For more information about the eFIRDS initiative, please visit efirds.eu.