Legal entity identifier: what else do you need to know?

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act sparked discussion of creating a systematic code that uniquely identifies an entity. This code is commonly referred to as a legal entity identifier (LEI). The information that is collected to accompany and describe the LEI will play an important role in enhancing the usefulness of the LEI. This paper explores the information (referred to as reference data) commonly used in datasets that describe entities and evaluates the usefulness of reference data elements for uniquely identifying an entity and for monitoring systemic risk in the financial industry.