The reality of a common financial language: Development of common global legal entity identifiers (LEIs) for wholesale markets.
The call for a ‘common financial language’ (CFL) is now a topic of much discussion in regulatory and industry circles with current initiatives underway in developing global legal entity identifiers (LEI) for wholesale market participants with the LEIs consisting of the ‘nouns’ of a common financial language with an accompanying system of product identifier’s (PIs) making the corresponding ‘verbs’.
Potential efficiency and risk-management benefits from developing greater CFL for data management are large, however, this paper questions whether the development of such common language is indeed a realistic goal for wholesale market activities. In particular whether there can be a single CFL given that there is no single underlying and unchanging financial reality.
Institution(s):
- AskGet Consulting
- Loughborough University School of Business