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gleifr

gleifr is a minimal R client for the GLEIF API. A major challenge when dealing with financial data is mapping entities across different data sources. The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a 20-character, alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies legally distinct entities that engage in financial transactions. The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) maintains the global LEI system and exposes it through a free, public API.

gleifr wraps that API so you can, from R:

  • look up the reference data behind any LEI, or search for LEIs by name, jurisdiction, or full text,
  • traverse corporate hierarchies via direct and ultimate parent and child relationships,
  • map LEIs to other identifiers such as ISIN, BIC, and MIC,
  • and access supporting reference data like regions and accredited issuers (Local Operating Units).

Installation

You can install the development version of gleifr from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("m-muecke/gleifr")

Usage

Looking up a record by LEI

Pass a LEI to lei_record_by_id() to retrieve its full reference data. By default the result is returned as a tidy long-format data frame with one attribute per row:

record <- lei_record_by_id("001GPB6A9XPE8XJICC14")
str(record)
#> 'data.frame':    37 obs. of  3 variables:
#>  $ lei  : chr  "001GPB6A9XPE8XJICC14" "001GPB6A9XPE8XJICC14" "001GPB6A9XPE8XJ"..
#>  $ name : chr  "entity_legal_name_name" "entity_legal_name_language" "entity_"..
#>  $ value: chr  "Fidelity Advisor Leveraged Company Stock Fund" "en" "FIDELITY"..

Searching for records

Use lei_records() to query the LEI database. You can filter by legal name, country, jurisdiction, status, category, or ISIN, or run a full-text query:

# search by legal name
lei_records(legal_name = "Deutsche Bank")

# combine filters
lei_records(country = "DE", registration_status = "ISSUED")

Corporate relationships

Traverse ownership hierarchies with lei_parent() and lei_children():

# direct parent (use type = "ultimate" for the ultimate parent)
lei_parent("529900W18LQJJN6SJ336")

# direct children
lei_children("529900W18LQJJN6SJ336")

Identifier mappings

lei_mapping() downloads the latest bulk relationship file that maps every LEI to another identifier type: ISIN, BIC, MIC, or OpenCorporates ID ("oc"):

mapping <- lei_mapping("isin")
head(mapping)
#>                    lei         isin
#> 1 00EHHQ2ZHDCFXJCPCL46 US92204Q1031
#> 2 00KLB2PFTM3060S2N216 US4138382027
#> 3 029200038B4L4ZI1E579 NGSDCBANCO00
#> 4 029200067A7K6CH0H586 NGSDCSCSPLC2
#> 5 0292001178F3RHI5D836 NGNEIMETH001
#> 6 0292001178F3RHI5D836 NGRR26NEIME9

To fetch the ISINs for a single entity instead of the full file, use lei_isins():

lei_isins("529900W18LQJJN6SJ336")

Caching

API responses can be cached locally to avoid repeated downloads. Caching is opt-in and controlled through options:

# enable caching (responses are kept for 1 day by default)
options(gleifr.cache = TRUE)

# customize the maximum age in seconds
options(gleifr.cache_max_age = 3600)

# inspect or clear the cache
lei_cache_dir()
lei_cache_clear()