GLEIF LEI Lookup & Corporate Ownership — for AI Agents

A legal-entity (KYB) and ownership tool built for AI agents, LLMs and compliance workflows. Look up Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI) and corporate ownership from the official GLEIF database — LEI code, legal name, address, status, legal form, jurisdiction and parent/child relationships. The "which company is this, and who owns it?" lookup an agent needs for KYB, due diligence and entity resolution.

Clean, structured output — one record per entity, ready for an LLM context or an agent tool response. Callable by Claude, ChatGPT, LangChain, CrewAI, LlamaIndex and any MCP client (every Apify actor is MCP-callable via mcp.apify.com).

🏦 Official, ownership-aware entity data. "What's Deutsche Bank's LEI? Who is its ultimate parent? How many subsidiaries?" — the actor returns sourced, machine-readable answers.

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🤖 Why this is an AI-agent tool

Know-Your-Business (KYB) and entity resolution are core agent needs. GLEIF is the global authority on legal-entity identity:

• ✅ Authoritative LEI — the ISO 17442 global identifier for legal entities
• ✅ Ownership tree — direct & ultimate parents and child counts (most tools skip this)
• ✅ Structured & sourced — clean fields for compliance and due diligence
• ✅ MCP-ready — call it from any agent framework or MCP client

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📋 What this actor does

Search by name, full text, country or LEI and get, for each entity:

• ✅ LEI code, legal name, status and legal form
• ✅ Legal & headquarters address, city, country, jurisdiction
• ✅ Registration — status, initial date, next renewal
• ✅ Ownership — direct & ultimate parent (LEI + name), number of children

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🚀 Quick start

1. Enter a Search query (e.g. Deutsche Bank) or a Country (e.g. DE).
2. Keep Include ownership on for the parent/child tree.
3. Set Max results and click Start.
4. Read the structured entities from Storage → Dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
Search query	string	Company name or text, e.g. Apple, Deutsche Bank.
Search mode	select	Full text (broad, incl. addresses) or Legal name (precise).
Country	string	Filter by legal-address country (ISO 2-letter, e.g. US, DE, GB).
LEI codes	array	Look up specific LEIs directly.
Active registrations only	boolean	Keep only issued/active registrations.
Include ownership	boolean	Fetch direct & ultimate parent and child count.
Max results	integer	Cap on entities. 0 = no limit.
Proxy	object	Optional — GLEIF is keyless with no anti-bot.

Example 1 — Companies named "Deutsche Bank" with ownership

{ "query": "Deutsche Bank", "includeOwnership": true, "maxItems": 200 }

Example 2 — Active entities in Germany

{ "country": "DE", "activeOnly": true, "maxItems": 500 }

Example 3 — Specific LEIs

{ "leis": ["7LTWFZYICNSX8D621K86"], "includeOwnership": true }

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📦 Output

{
  "lei": "7LTWFZYICNSX8D621K86",
  "legalName": "Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft",
  "entityStatus": "ACTIVE",
  "registrationStatus": "ISSUED",
  "legalForm": "6QQB",
  "category": "GENERAL",
  "jurisdiction": "DE",
  "legalAddress": "Taunusanlage 12, Frankfurt am Main, 60325, DE",
  "legalCity": "Frankfurt am Main",
  "legalCountry": "DE",
  "hqCountry": "DE",
  "initialRegistrationDate": "2012-11-27",
  "nextRenewalDate": "2026-11-26",
  "ultimateParentLei": null,
  "ultimateParentName": null,
  "directParentLei": null,
  "directParentName": null,
  "childrenCount": "412",
  "gleifUrl": "https://search.gleif.org/#/record/7LTWFZYICNSX8D621K86",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-04T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Description
lei	Legal Entity Identifier (20 chars).
legalName	Registered legal name.
entityStatus / registrationStatus	Entity and registration status.
legalForm / category / jurisdiction	Legal form (ELF), category, jurisdiction.
legalAddress / legalCity / legalCountry	Legal address.
hqAddress / hqCountry	Headquarters.
initialRegistrationDate / lastUpdateDate / nextRenewalDate	Registration dates.
ultimateParentLei / ultimateParentName	Ultimate parent (if part of a group).
directParentLei / directParentName	Direct parent.
childrenCount	Number of direct children/subsidiaries.
gleifUrl	GLEIF record link.

Note: ownership fields are populated only when the entity is part of a corporate group; independent entities have no parent.

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🔌 AI & integrations

• MCP: every Apify actor is callable from mcp.apify.com — add this as a tool in Claude Desktop, VS Code or any MCP client.
• Frameworks: LangChain (ApifyActorsTool), LlamaIndex, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, n8n.
• API: run and fetch results with the Apify API or JS / Python clients.

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💡 Use cases

Use case	How it helps
KYB / onboarding	Verify a legal entity and its LEI in seconds.
AML / compliance	Resolve ownership trees for due diligence.
Entity resolution	Map company names to a global identifier.
Supplier / counterparty risk	Check status, jurisdiction and parentage.

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❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key? No — GLEIF is keyless and open.

What is an LEI? A 20-character ISO 17442 identifier for a legally distinct entity, issued globally under GLEIF.

Why are ownership fields sometimes empty? Only entities that are part of a corporate group have parents; independent entities don't.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes — it's designed as a tool-call source and is MCP-callable via Apify.

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⚖️ Legal & responsible use

This actor uses the public GLEIF API. LEI data is published under CC0. Respect the API's rate limits and use the data for lawful purposes such as KYB, compliance and research.

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🛟 Support

Need an extra field or relationship? Open a ticket from the actor's Issues tab.

Happy resolving! 🏦