The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA), a global member association seeking to foster standardisation within the financial industry by upholding the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) principles and by promoting International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs), Classification of Financial Instrument codes (CFIs), and Financial Instrument Short Names (FISN), for financial instruments, announced today that 16 National Numbering Agencies (NNAs) have now signed up to this voluntary initiative which maps new and legacy ISINs to their corresponding LEIs, a joint initiative ANNA is undertaking with the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).

Set up to improve transparency and aid risk and exposure management by bringing these two ISO standards together, the ISIN to LEI linkage service went live on 4th April this year, and already there have been over 4.5 million ISIN records linked to 64,000 unique LEIs. 16 NNAs have joined the ISIN-to-LEI Mapping initiative to date with ISIN coverage across 20 jurisdictions, most recently Italy, Japan, Spain, Turkey and USA, with more NNAs in the pipeline. Information on the participating NNAs is published on the ANNA website as and when they join the initiative.

The ISIN-to-LEI mapping table is freely available to all without restriction with links to the data available on both the GLEIF and ANNA websites. The linking of ISINs and LEIs has also been endorsed by regulators, including the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Dan Kuhnel, Chairman, ANNA, said, “We are delighted with the continued success of such an important collaboration to help the industry improve transparency of exposure by linking the issuer and issuance of securities. We are working across all regions, to make this ISIN LEI mapping a truly global initiative.”

Stephan Wolf, CEO, GLEIF, said, “We are pleased that this initiative to bring ISO standards together like this, linking the global instrument and global identity, is proving so popular with early adopters who are reaping the benefits. By linking the two ISO standards together, firms are able to aggregate the data required to gain a clear view of their securities exposure within a given issuer and its related entities.”

Source: ANNA