In the world of financial data, there are over 50 different unique legal entity identifiers. Many have been created by proprietary data vendors such as Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters or S&P CapitalIQ, but many more are publicly available from regulators, exchanges, government bodies or local operating units (LOUs).

The challenge is how to match and map them all together for reporting purposes, risk exposure calculations or to eliminate data silos.

Resolve is Alacra’s proprietary matching and cross-referencing software algorithm based upon almost 20 years of experience and business rules in cleansing, de-deduping and cross-referencing legal entities for the world’s premier financial institutions.

Alacra’s Resolve provides a quick and easy way to see multiple identifiers for the same entity in one clean, simple file.

As Resolve can match an entity to its correct legal name, as well as cross-reference it to all its publicly available identifiers, it can address a number of business challenges:

• Finding the LEI for an entity so that it can be added to a database record or appended to a transaction report.
• Cross-referencing one vendor data source to another (and/or to an internal data source).
• Adding the GIIN to an entity for regulatory reporting under FATCA.
• Uniquely identifying an entity for the purposes of KYC on-boarding.
• Identifying whether, and by whom, an entity is rated, regulated or listed.

Please note: In the free version, we will only match up to 10 entities. If you are interested in uploading larger files please contact us as at resolve@alacra.com.

Alacra’s Concordance is our full-service entity identifier mapping solution where Alacra will de-dupe and cross-reference your universe of legal entities. It uses a combination of software algorithm, 20 years of business rules and a research team to manage the process.

Resolve is the software engine and business rules part of that process. It generates both confirmed and potential matches.

In Alacra’s Concordance process our research team would review these potential matches and uniquely identify the entity. If you are interested in learning more about this service, please visit our Concordance page.

The free version of Resolve allows you to upload a file with up to 10 entities. It will attempt to match those entities to one of almost 5 million legal entities in the Alacra Legal Entity Directory.

Once matched it will provide information on all the publicly available identifiers, including the LEI, as well as whether the entity is rated, regulated or listed.

Please note: In the free version, we will only match up to 10 entities, any additional entries will be ignored. If you are interested in uploading larger files please contact us as at resolve@alacra.com.

The commercial version of Resolve will allow you to match more than just 10 entities. It will also allow you to cross-reference and match to data and identifiers from proprietary data providers (subject to having an appropriate license in place).

If you are interested in exploring commercial access to the product, please email us at resolve@alacra.com.

Please provide your entities in a Microsoft Excel file.

• For each entity, you must include a name and a country of operations.
• You may also include State and City, but these two fields are optional, and Resolve will still work if they are left blank.
• Each item of information should be entered in a separate field.
• You can download a file template here to ensure your data is in the correct format.

Resolve will normalize the data to take account of foreign character accents as well as country names and country codes.

Please note: We will only match up to 10 entities; any additional entries will be ignored.

While the matching process is complex, Resolve has been optimized for web delivery of up to 10 results. Your results will be available within seconds of your file upload.

We will display your results on a web-page.

For each match we will provide a link to allow you to view:

• All the publicly available identifiers associated with that entity.
• Information as to whether the entity is rated, regulated or listed.
• Identification as to whether the entity is covered by one of the major data vendors.

In the commercial version of Resolve, where the file size may be far larger than just 10 entities, the results will be delivered in a Microsoft Excel file available for download.

Where Resolve has found matches but has not been able to uniquely identify the entity you submitted, it will provide a list of the potential matches that have the same degree of confidence.

In Alacra’s Concordance process our research team would review these potential matches and uniquely identify the entity. If you are interested in learning more about this service, please visit our Concordance page.

If Resolve is unable to return a match it could mean that, either:

• There are, indeed, no matches for the entity submitted in the almost 5 million legal entities in the Alacra Legal Entity Directory, or;
• The information you submitted is not in a readable format. In this case, please check your spreadsheet and consider resubmitting it (see the FAQ section about file format).