The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released a Master Direction on Unique Identifiers in Financial Markets, consolidating existing guidelines to enhance regulatory clarity and ease of doing business.

Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and Unique Transaction Identifier (UTI) are globally recognized data elements used for reporting over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions. While LEI helps in uniquely identifying transaction counterparties, UTI provides a single reference number for each transaction.

Over time, the RBI has mandated the use of LEI for various financial market transactions and introduced UTI requirements for OTC derivatives. These instructions have now been brought together under a single Master Direction to improve accessibility and streamline compliance for market participants.