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Up to 10 percent of EU issuers are yet to put legal entity identifiers (LEI) in place with only days to go before the go-live of the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), according to Darragh Hayes, director of LEI Worldwide.
Ahead of the go-live date on 13 July, the LEI requirement will become a mandatory reporting obligation extended to entities like investment firms, creditors and central securities depositories (CSDs).
According to European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) the EU has 88 percent LEI coverage as of January but recent estimations are around 90 percent.
“The issue is that LEI coverage in the EU is over 90 percent moving into July,” says Hayes.
Many firms will already be prepared for the LEI requirement, as they received a reprieve, as ESMA extended the original deadline in April until July, due to added pressures firms have been placed under with COVID-19.
Hayes adds; “COVID-19 has definitely impacted the workflow of firms falling under SFTR, and we have seen this cause setbacks as firms prepare for SFTR. But, the trend looks positive from our point of view as we have had a spike of enquiries about SFTR LEI requirements in the last couple of weeks”.
The director of LEI Worldwide, a GLEIF-accredited registration agent that provides LEIs to firms globally, explains that most enquiries it gets tend to be from EU firms such as fund administration companies, asset managers and investment firms.
“Registrations have been high and over 1,000 LEIs have been issued in Ireland since January this year, hopefully, more to come before the mid-July deadline,” he notes.
You can read the full interview with LEI Worldwide’s Darragh Hayes in the latest issue of SLT here.
