Datasets / EDGAR ↔ GLEIF — Company-to-LEI Crosswalk

Background

How a CIK reaches an LEI, and what the tiers mean

A CIK is the number the SEC's EDGAR system assigns to identify each filer account.^[3] An LEI is a unique 20-character alphanumeric code, and every LEI can represent only one legal entity.^[4] The LEI's first four characters identify the Local Operating Unit that issued it, and its last two are check digits calculated using MOD-97-10 as per ISO/IEC 7064.^[5]

An LEI record can point to the register that holds the entity's own record, by that register's code on GLEIF's Registration Authorities List and the entity's identifier there.^[6] GLEIF's Registration Authorities List gives EDGAR, the register of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the code RA000665.^[7] Form N-CEN asks each registrant for its CIK and its LEI.^[8] Form N-CEN asks each fund of a management investment company for its series identification number, if any, and its LEI.^[8] Meridian's authoritative edges come from official SEC and GLEIF registration, with no guessing.^[1] An authoritative edge has a confidence of 1.0 in the crosswalk.^[1]

Meridian marks an edge confirmed when the normalised company names match exactly, a match it puts at about 95% precision.^[1] Meridian marks an edge candidate when only a fuzzy name match supports it, and surfaces the edge without asserting it.^[1]

Who uses it

EDGAR is the primary system for companies and others submitting documents under the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, and the Investment Company Act of 1940.^[9] Each LEI connects to verified reference information, including the entity's ownership structure, which is accessible in the Global LEI Index.^[4]

Meridian's edgar dataset is a ticker and exchange listing rather than the CIK universe, so it covers a small part of the registrants the crosswalk keys on.^[1]

Form N-CEN defines a fund as the registrant or a separate series of the registrant.^[8] Treat a candidate edge as a lead to check by hand, never as a link to report. (Meridian's view)

The crosswalk's reg_status column carries GLEIF's registration status for the matched LEI, which can be LAPSED or RETIRED as well as ISSUED.^[1] Check reg_status before you treat an LEI as the entity's current one. (Meridian's view)

What we found building it

The LEI field in Form N-CEN filings is free text typed by the filer, and a filer with no LEI to report may leave it empty or write a row of zeroes.^[2] A row of twenty zeroes satisfies the LEI's eighteen-alphanumeric-plus-two-digit shape, because a pattern does not evaluate a checksum.^[2] Meridian admits an LEI only when its ISO 7064 MOD 97-10 check digits are valid or GLEIF publishes it.^[2]

A filer absent from the crosswalk means Meridian found no identity edge it was willing to publish, not that no such filer exists.^[2] Meridian takes no crowd-sourced data into the published crosswalk, and uses Wikidata only as an out-of-band cross-check.^[2]

Where it comes from

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, regulators worldwide acknowledged their inability to identify parties to transactions across markets, products, and regions.^[10] The Financial Stability Board, with the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, advocated a universal LEI applicable to any legal entity that engages in financial transactions.^[10] GLEIF was established in 2014 by the Financial Stability Board, and is backed and overseen by the Regulatory Oversight Committee.^[11] The technical specification for the LEI is ISO 17442.^[5] GLEIF publishes the Registration Authorities List, which assigns a unique code to each business register or authority on it.^[6]

EDGAR assigns a CIK whether a filer files electronically on EDGAR or submits to the SEC on paper.^[3] The SEC's fund reporting modernisation rules required registered funds to file a new annual reporting form, Form N-CEN, carrying census-type information in a structured data format.^[12] Form N-CEN was to replace Form N-SAR, the form then used to report fund census information.^[12] Form N-CEN is filed by all registered investment companies other than face-amount certificate companies.^[8]

Sources

1. [1]datapackage.jsonMeridian's method docs
2. [2]README.mdMeridian's method docs
3. [3]SEC.gov | Understand and Utilize EDGAR CIK and CIK Confirmation Code (CCC)documentation
4. [4]The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) - LEI & vLEI - Organizational Identity – GLEIFdocumentation
5. [5]Legal Entity Identifier - Wikipediasecondary source
6. [6]GLEIF Registration Authorities List - Code Lists - LEI Data – GLEIFdocumentation
7. [7]2026-09-30_ra-list-v1.9.csvdataset
8. [8]Form N-CENdocumentation
9. [9]SEC.gov | About EDGARdocumentation
10. [10]History - GLEIF – GLEIFdocumentation
11. [11]This is GLEIF - GLEIF – GLEIFdocumentation
12. [12]SEC.gov | SEC Adopts Rules to Modernize Information Reported by Funds, Require Liquidity Risk Management Programs, and Permit Swing Pricingdocumentation