# LEI

A Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character code identifying a legal entity that takes part in financial transactions, defined by ISO 17442.

Date: 2026-09-10

A Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character code identifying a legal entity that takes part in financial transactions, defined by ISO 17442. Eighteen characters identify the entity and the last two are a check digit.

## What Spaw answers

`identifier_type` is `lei`, and the answer carries the legal name, the status in the register's own wording, the country, the jurisdiction and the incorporation date. Three fields belong to the LEI alone: `checksum_valid`, `registration_status` and `next_renewal_at`.

That last pair matters because a LEI is a subscription. It lapses if nobody renews it while the company behind it carries on trading, so `registration_status` is a fact about the identifier and never about whether the business is alive. The flag `lei_registration_not_current` names it when it happens.

## What it is not

It is not official reference data and Spaw is not affiliated with the organisation that runs the LEI system. The answer here is a derived verdict read from a daily copy of the public file, held on this server so that no third party sits in the request path, and every response names the date of the copy it read.

There is no registered address in the answer, deliberately: an identifier does not say whether a company or a sole trader stands behind it, and a registered address is very often somebody's home.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/lei