SIX teams with DTCC to issue legal entity identifiers in Switzerland
SIX Securities Services, which runs the central securities depository (CSD) for Switzerland, is partnering with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) to offer legal entity identifiers (LEIs) for Swiss entities.
According to SIX, LEIs were devised to provide insight into corporate entities with the aim of reducing cross-platform risk exposure. By providing LEIs together, SIX and DTCC’s Global Markets Entity Identifier utility (GMEI utility) will help regulators and market participants to aggregate their exposures, “enhance market transparency and significantly improve the analysis of global systemic risk”.
Ron Jordan, managing director of data services at DTCC, says: “The true value of the global LEI system will be realised when regulatory reporting covering all asset classes in every jurisdiction is required to use LEIs to identify trading parties.”
SIX says this partnership comes as Europe readies itself for the implementation of MiFID II on 1 January 2018. This new regulatory mandate will require all legal entities involved in a trade, including the executing, submitting or transmitting firm, on both the buy- and sell-side, to include LEIs in their European trade reporting.
In January last year, Switzerland’s Financial Market Infrastructure Ordinance (FMIO) came into force introducing LEIs into Swiss reporting duties. Using the GMEI utility, SIX offers Swiss entities the ability to register and renew LEIs in order to trade with European counterparties.
