Swift U-Turn on Business Identifier Code Plans, New ISO Standard to Meet LEI Requirements

Abstract

Interbank utility Swift, a contender in the race to become the registration authority for the legal entity identifier, has decided that the business identifier code (BIC) will not form the basis of the legal entity identifier, officials tell Inside Reference Data. In Swift's January comment letter to the Office of Financial Research on legal entity identification, it suggested the BIC, for which it is the registration authority, could be used as a legal entity identifier (LEI). The argument was that the existing code is a registered ISO standard that is widely used, and extending the scope of this code could help keep implementation costs down. Meanwhile, the BIC is not the only proposed LEI that includes some degree of logic.