In May 2020, National Settlement Depository (NSD) successfully passed its annual accreditation verification by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), and affirmed its status as a Local Operating Unit (LOU). NSD is the first and the only company with LOU status in Russia and CIS countries.
A company with LOU status is authorized to assign Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) to market participants and to verify LEIs every year. It also can accept for servicing market participants’ LEIs transferred from other LOUs, and transmit data on the codes to the global LEI database supported by GLEIF.
Being a LOU, NSD provides services in 30 jurisdictions which, in addition to the Russian Federation, include countries of the CIS, Western and Eastern Europe, and other countries; market participants can apply to NSD for LEI assignment and servicing. NSD continues to expand the list of serviced jurisdictions based on client requests. In 2019, NSD assigned 83 new LEIs and verified 530 LEIs.
Responding to CIS client needs, in 2019, NSD developed an approach to assign and further service LEIs via the Registering agent licensed by GLEIF and operating in the client’s country. Working via the Registering agent will facilitate and accelerate foreign participants’ access to NSD services designed to assign and verify LEIs.
NSD’s activities as the Numbering Agency and LOU contribute to the introduction of international codification standards in the Russian market and CIS country markets; the standards increase market transparency, enhance integration into the global market infrastructure, and facilitate and optimize financial market transactions.