Switzerland connects national business register to global LEI framework - Trade Treasury Payments

A new data linkage between the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO) is aiming to make Swiss businesses easier to find (and easier to trust) on the global stage. Through the collaboration, LEI records for Swiss companies now include a direct link to their official registration entry in the FSO’s UID system, removing common roadblocks in international due diligence and compliance processes.

All active Swiss businesses are already assigned a UID by the FSO. What this initiative does is bring that data into closer alignment with the global LEI system by embedding a path from the LEI profile to the official registry. For financial institutions, regulators, or anyone conducting KYC or supplier checks, this eliminates the usual legwork of navigating a foreign registry, translating fields, and confirming an entity’s legitimacy manually.

It also matters for visibility. Swiss SMEs make up over 99 percent of companies in the country, but many remain largely invisible to international partners unless those partners know exactly where, and how, to look. By embedding a verifiable trail from global identity data to local registry information, this move helps surface those businesses more effectively in a cross-border context.

GLEIF has already rolled out similar links with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce and the UK’s Companies House. The Swiss integration follows the same model: connect the LEI to a trusted national source and let the user validate data directly from it. According to GLEIF, this is part of a push to establish the LEI as a universal access point for legal entity data across jurisdictions.

Alexandre Kech, CEO of GLEIF, said: “GLEIF and the Swiss Federal Statistical Office share a commitment to enabling greater transparency and digital trust in global markets. Through this collaboration, we are making global due diligence far more efficient and highlighting the value of the LEI in facilitating international trade. By linking LEI records with authoritative business registries, GLEIF is building a globally interoperable digital identity infrastructure that promotes financial integrity, regulatory efficiency, and economic opportunity.”

GLEIF is continuing to expand this framework and is currently in discussions with other registries around the world. The idea is to keep building out the LEI as a lightweight but powerful connector that can link open data to official records in a way that’s both scalable and secure.