London Stock Exchange (LSX) has partnered with APIR Systems, endorsed by the Financial Services Council (FSC) as the identification and coding standard for the wealth management industry in Australia, to support the issuance and maintenance of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI).
The partnership would aim to provide Australian financial services firms with assistance to help them comply with new global compliance standards while APIR Systems would act as a registered agent in Australia and South-East Asian markets.
Under the terms of the deal, APIR Systems would ensure that its clients would be able to obtain an LEI, the required global standard providing improved transparency of financial transactions that cross jurisdictional borders, in order to remain compliant.
It would also assist its clients with understanding their LEI requirements and would send details to London Stock Exchange for validation and approval, it said.
APIR Systems’ chief executive, Chris Donohoe, said: “Although MiFID II is relatively new to Australian entities it does impact a broad range of financial services firms that transact with European counterparts, including funds, SMSFs [self-managed superannuation funds] and traders”.
“The relationship with London Stock Exchange offers benefits for both our existing clients and the new clients segments that will soon be impacted by these changes.”
According to the company, there was still a large number of LEIs that would need to be acquired before the go-live of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) reporting regime on 3 January, 2018 as the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) stated that firms should not trade with counterparties without LEI as they would not be able to submit valid transaction reports.
