Corporate KYC Intelligence — LEI ownership tree & compliance risk

Give it a company name or LEI code and get back its official Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) record, its registration health, and its full corporate ownership tree — direct parent, ultimate parent, and direct subsidiaries — in one request. Built for KYC analysts, compliance and supplier-risk teams, and anyone who needs to answer "who actually owns this company, and is its official registration in good standing?" without opening five different sites by hand.

What it does

For each company you give it (a legal name or a 20-character LEI code) it returns:

• the GLEIF LEI record: legal name, jurisdiction, legal form, registered and headquarters address, entity status
• registration status — ISSUED (current), LAPSED or RETIRED. A lapsed/retired LEI means the company stopped renewing its own official identifier — a real, independent compliance red flag banks and auditors watch for, separate from any news event
• the ownership tree in one request: direct parent, ultimate parent (with their own LEI, name, jurisdiction and registration status), and up to childrenLimit direct subsidiaries
• compliance_risk_flags: a plain list such as LEI_REGISTRATION_LAPSED, ENTITY_STATUS_INACTIVE, DIRECT_PARENT_NOT_DISCLOSED — so you can filter a batch straight to the companies worth a second look
• optionally, an OpenCorporates enrichment block (company number, incorporation date, current status) — only if you supply your own OpenCorporates API token

Why this and not the other OpenCorporates-style Actors

Most Actors in this niche wrap OpenCorporates search, which as of September 2026 requires a paid API token even for a plain company search (OpenCorporates now rejects unauthenticated requests outright — verified live:

{"error": {"message":"Invalid Api Token..."}}

The distinguishing feature: the full ownership tree in a single Actor run — direct parent, ultimate parent AND direct subsidiaries together, plus the registration-status compliance flag. Existing OpenCorporates-based Actors return one company's own filing data; GLEIF's relationship data (who owns whom) needs three separate endpoint calls per company, which this Actor already handles for you, batched and throttled.

How to use it

1. Put company names or LEI codes in Companies, one per line.
2. Leave Include ownership tree on (default) to get direct/ultimate parent and direct subsidiaries for free — no extra charge.
3. If a name matches more than one company (e.g. "Deutsche Bank" — dozens of legal entities share that brand name), the row comes back with status: "ambiguous" and a match_candidates list of every LEI/name/ jurisdiction GLEIF found; re-run with the exact legal name, the LEI code, or set Limit name search to jurisdiction.
4. Sort the resulting dataset by compliance_risk_flags to see which companies have a lapsed registration or an undisclosed parent.

Sample output

{
  "input": "Lehman Brothers Limited",
  "status": "ok",
  "lei": "213800Q7NV3T5PZOU403",
  "legal_name": "LEHMAN BROTHERS LIMITED",
  "jurisdiction": "GB",
  "entity_status": "ACTIVE",
  "registration_status": "LAPSED",
  "registration_next_renewal": "2025-12-20T00:00:00Z",
  "direct_parent": {"relationship": "direct-parent", "disclosed": false, "reason": "NO_KNOWN_PERSON"},
  "ultimate_parent": {"relationship": "ultimate-parent", "disclosed": false, "reason": "NO_KNOWN_PERSON"},
  "direct_children": {"count_returned": 0, "children": [], "truncated": false},
  "compliance_risk_flags": ["LEI_REGISTRATION_LAPSED"],
  "opencorporates": null,
  "gleif_record_url": "https://search.gleif.org/#/record/213800Q7NV3T5PZOU403",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-27T12:00:00+00:00",
  "error": null
}

A company with a live ownership tree (apps: ["Google Ireland Limited"]):

{
  "legal_name": "GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED",
  "registration_status": "ISSUED",
  "direct_parent": {"relationship": "direct-parent", "lei": "5493...", "legal_name": "GOOGLE INTERNATIONAL LLC"},
  "ultimate_parent": {"relationship": "ultimate-parent", "lei": "5493006MHB84DD0ZWV18", "legal_name": "ALPHABET INC."},
  "compliance_risk_flags": []
}

What this Actor does NOT do (honest scope)

• It is not a beneficial-ownership / UBO register. GLEIF's parent data is the corporate accounting-consolidation parent an entity itself reports — it is authoritative for "which company owns this company" but is not the same as a natural-person beneficial-ownership disclosure (some jurisdictions' UBO registers are not public data at all, so no Actor can honestly promise that).
• No officers, directors or filing documents. That is OpenCorporates territory, and OpenCorporates' free tier no longer allows it (see above). If you have your own OpenCorporates API token, paste it in opencorporatesApiToken and the Actor adds company number, incorporation date and current status per company — this is clearly labelled as an optional, user-supplied-token enrichment, never invented data.
• A name search can be ambiguous. Common brand names (banks, "Deutsche Bank", "HSBC") map to dozens of separate legal entities in GLEIF. The Actor never silently guesses — it returns status: "ambiguous" with every candidate so you can pick the right one, instead of quietly returning the wrong company's data.
• No sanctions/PEP screening. This Actor only reads GLEIF's LEI registry (and, optionally, OpenCorporates). It is not an OFAC/sanctions list check.

Data source

• GLEIF LEI API — https://www.gleif.org/en/lei-data/gleif-api — free, keyless, official, covers every LEI ever issued worldwide including lapsed/retired ones.
• OpenCorporates API — https://api.opencorporates.com — official, but as of 27 September 2026 requires your own paid API token even for search; used only if you supply one.

No scraping, no login walls bypassed, no paid API called without your own key.