Methodology

One institution per BIC8

A BIC has 8 or 11 characters, as defined in ISO 9362. The directory treats each BIC8 as one institution.

The last three characters are the branch code. “XXX” marks the head office.

Country and region

Characters 5–6 of a BIC are an ISO 3166 country code. Countries are grouped into the World Bank’s regions.

A branch abroad usually has its own BIC8 in the host country. It counts as an institution in that country.

Connection to Swift

The eighth character of a BIC gives its connection type. “1” marks a passive participant, with no connection to Swift.

“0” marks a test and training BIC. Any other character, including “2” for reverse billing, marks a BIC connected to Swift.

LEIs

Each BIC is looked up on all 11 characters in the BIC-to-LEI relationship files that Swift and GLEIF publish. An institution’s LEI is the LEI of its head-office BIC. A branch can carry its own LEI, for example when it belongs to a subsidiary.

Identifiers before names

Sanctions lists, payment registers, the ECB’s list of supervised entities, MICs and Wikidata are joined on a BIC, an LEI or a registration number. Bank data uses names in two cases only.

Swift publishes GPI members by name only. GPI status is therefore matched on the name, within the member’s region. An EU listing with no usable identifier is published only after a manual check of the name match.

Sanctions

OFAC listings are matched on the SWIFT/BIC codes each entry cites, including branch BICs. EU listings are matched on a listed BIC, or on a Russian OGRN registration number that GLEIF links to an LEI.

Country status counts only the country-named OFAC programmes and EU regimes that still have entries. A country is flagged when OFAC or the EU applies an embargo or broad financial-sector sanctions to it.

Global systemically important banks

The FSB publishes its G-SIB list by name only. Each G-SIB is mapped by hand to its LEI. The mapping is checked against GLEIF at each refresh.

Subsidiaries are found through GLEIF’s ultimate-parent records.

Researched profiles

For selected institutions, an AI model with web search researches an overview, leadership, regulators and events. Its sources are the institution’s website and reports, regulators, company registers and news.

Each figure, person and event links to its source. Each card shows the research date.

Images

Logos and photos come from Wikimedia Commons, through the institution’s Wikidata item. Where Wikimedia has none, they come from the institution’s own website.

Elucidate serves its own copy of each image. Each page credits the author, the licence and the original.

ISO 20022

Every institution and branch page shows its CBPR+ agent identification. With a BIC, that is the BIC, plus the LEI and a clearing code where mapped. A full record adds Swift’s name and address, which CBPR+ does not allow next to a BIC.

Without a BIC, it is the register’s name and postal address, plus the LEI or a clearing code where mapped. Nothing is transliterated, and a town is set only where the source gives it or Swift’s two address fields agree on it. A value that breaks a CBPR+ length or character rule is flagged on the page.

A national bank code gets an ISO 20022 clearing system code only where the External Code Sets define one for the same codes. Payment schemes are tagged where their rulebook or operator specifies ISO 20022 messages.

Swift has deferred the end of unstructured postal addresses in CBPR+ messages, first set for 14 November 2026. The hybrid address on the page is valid before and after that change.

Refresh

Each source is downloaded again when the directory is refreshed. The pages are then rebuilt from the new files. Institution pages show the date of each source next to its data.