LEI vs company registration number

A company registration number is assigned by a national business registry — Companies House in the UK, the Handelsregister in Germany, Brønnøysund in Norway — and is only guaranteed to be unique within that registry. Two entities in two countries can share the same registration number by coincidence.

An LEI is global. It is unique across every jurisdiction, and its reference data actually records which national registry the entity is in and its number there (the “registration authority” and its entity ID). So the LEI does not replace the company number — it points to it and wraps it in a globally unique code.

The practical difference: a company number answers “who is this entity in this country?”, while an LEI answers “which specific legal entity anywhere in the world is party to this transaction?”. Financial regulation needs the second question answered, which is why the LEI was created on top of, not instead of, national registries.