ISO 20275:2017

INTERNATIONAL ISO
STANDARD 20275
First edition
2017-07
Financial services — Entity legal
forms (ELF)
Services financiers — Formes juridique des entités (ELF)
Reference number
©
ISO 2017
© ISO 2017, Published in Switzerland
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ii © ISO 2017 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms and definitions . 1
4 ELF Code structure . 2
5 ELF data record . 2
6 Maintenance . 3
Foreword
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This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 68, Financial services.
iv © ISO 2017 – All rights reserved

Introduction
Understanding the legal form of an entity is an important component of financial services transactions.
Entering into a business relationship requires distinguishing the type of entity that is being transacted
with. Parties (and their organizational structure) involved in financial transactions need to be identified
within these transactions. This is achieved while the support for straight through processing (STP) is
still maintained. Standardization of the legal or organizational construct will aid flexibility and provide
greater understanding of exposure to risk and access to capital.
Regulators and market participants have recognized the need to identify entity legal forms, both
nationally and consistently across the global markets and have asked for a standard to be developed to
meet this need.
This document fulfils the need for the identification of entity legal forms in a structured way in order,
among other things, for entities to be classified according to the nature of their legal constitution. Its
key provisions are that it:
— enables unique identification globally of entity legal forms;
— defines an ELF scheme that is reliable and an ELF Code that is persistent;
— defines an ELF code that contains no embedded intelligence regarding the identification of the
entity legal form to which it applies;
— leverages the expertise of ISO/TC 68 in defining and maintaining identifier standards;
— defines an ELF scheme that is extensible and free from limitation on use and redistribution.
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO 20275:2017(E)
Financial services — Entity legal forms (ELF)
1 Scope
This document specifies the elements of an unambiguous scheme to identify the distinct entity legal
forms in a jurisdiction. Its aim is to enable legal forms within jurisdictions to be codified and thus
facilitate the classification of legal entities according to their legal form.
It is not the purpose of the document to give the comparison or alignment of entity legal forms across
different jurisdictions, so as not to limit its usage and relevance.
2 Normative references
The following documents are referred to in the text
...