World Council: LEIs could have value, shouldn’t be mandatory

While World Council of Credit Unions does not support a requirement for credit unions to obtain “Legal Entity Identifiers” (LEIs) it sees some potential value in encouraging increased use of this system, the World Council wrote to the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

The World Council’s letter was sent in response to a thematic peer review on implementation of LEIs. The FSB first established the LEI system in 2012. The World Council previously engaged with the FSB on LEIs in 2012, urging the board not to mandate use of the system for credit unions.

Since then credit unions have only been required to obtain an LEI if it engaged in derivatives trades such as interest rate swaps and caps. The board has now proposed to potentially expand the use of LEIs to other areas such as payments, Bank Secrecy Act customer due diligence, and credit reporting.

 

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