Wiki-Data beta

On this website, you will find basic information about a number of those business entities including their legal name, country of incorporation, primary operational location details which comprise country, state/province/region (for US, Canadian and Australian entities) and city as well as the Avox identifier (we refer to it as the AVID).

We are putting these "skinny" records on this website for restriction-free usage. The only thing we ask in return is for you to inform us when you find something that you believe is incorrect. For example, you may not be able to locate a business with a specific name in the country where we indicated it operates or is registered. We will work with you to establish the correct information. By doing so, you will help improve and maintain the quality and timeliness of this shared data asset making it more reliable and therefore more useful for everyone (by the way, the most frequent cause of incorrect data is because the entity has gone through a name or address change. It may also be that you have the incorrect information from a source that you have assumed was always correct in the past).

Note that there may be minor discrepancies resulting from application of acronyms or punctuation which you don't need to tell us about unless these discrepancies don't comply with our data standards. A short explanation of those standards is shown when you hover your cursor over the heading of each column in the search results.

Avox is publishing this information for your free usage in an effort to help facilitate a common standard for business entity data. By making this content available for free, we are making this everyone's data. The AVID can also be used freely. Any data record with an AVID attached has been comprehensively verified and is maintained by our team of data experts. It is also continuously checked by our clients by virtue of its usage within their organisations. And now, it's also being checked by you.

Of course, as a commercial enterprise, we have a mandate to generate profitable revenue. By publishing this basic data, we therefore hope to generate interest in additional data and services offered by Avox.

"Aren't you undermining your own business by doing this?" you may ask. On the contrary, by acting as a catalyst to drive an open standard for this data, we believe that we will increase demand for authoritative verification and enrichment services provided by firms such as Avox. Not everyone will choose to work with us but that's not the point. We expect that wiki-data will help other vendors provide better quality data in a more efficient manner which ultimately helps you, the consumer of this data. We all win. The key to our future success at Avox will be to continuously innovate and provide additional content, links and services. Some of this will be funded by clients directly. Some of our offerings will be funded by advertising. And some we will provide for free in the spirit of wiki-data and because delivering more value to the global community increases awareness of our brand and the success of our business.

As you may be aware a proposed global LEI standard was endorsed at the G20 meeting in early November, 2011.

Legal Entity Identification (LEI) for Financial Contracts, a Universal Standard for Identifying All Parties to Financial Contracts is a new proposed global standard to be established by the international financial community. It is a key element in the broader effort to understand and monitor systemic risk. Its creation is anticipated to have a broad impact throughout the financial markets at a very fundamental level. Significant improvements in operational efficiency, risk management and regulatory compliance are projected.

The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a unique, 20 character ID associated with a single corporate entity. The LEI is currently a proposed ISO standard (ISO 17442) and is expected to be finalized in Q2, 2012. Until that time, the LEI will be referred to as the 'provisional legal entity identifier' within Avox files and web portal applications.

The LEI will be cross referenced to AVID as a result of being included in both the wiki-data file update service and in www.wiki-data.com as soon as the LEI is made publicly available.

Avox will add all new LEI records made available by the LEI Utility as soon as those records are publicly available.

Avox offers a data record matching service to assist firms with mapping from their internal business entity databases to the AVID and the soon to be released LEI.

You can read more at www.sifma.org

This service offers subscribers the ability to download all the legal and sub-legal entity data records that are available to view through www.wiki-data.com.

Avox is making available daily updates to our database of over 430,000 business entities in downloadable file form. wiki-data.com contains 9 key data attributes describing business entities in over 230 legal jurisdictions across all industries.

Each week subscribers will also be provided with a completely refreshed file, containing updates to all entities that have changed (corporate updates). It will also contain all new entities that have been added to the wiki-data.com service.

The Avox Identifier (AVID) is included in the content and can be used without restriction.

To enquire about subscribing to this service, please complete the following form or contact us at:

+44 1978 661 813 during UK business hours.
+1 (212) 855-3289 during US business hours
+61 2 9959 2374 during Australian business hours.

We've set up a blogging forum for wiki-data at http://avoxinfo.blogspot.com/ where we hope you will offer your ideas, comments and criticisms. This is the beginning of an open standard in business entity data. It needs your active participation. We welcome and encourage involvement from other vendors, regardless of whether or not they are our competitors.

By leveraging the Internet, open standards and a global community, it is our strong belief that costs can be driven down substantially while data quality will elevate to the highest possible level. So let's get started. As we like to say at Avox, "It's your data".

Avox, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, validates, corrects, enriches and maintains business entity reference data. This includes data such as corporate hierarchies, registered address information, industry sector codes and company identifiers.

The company was founded several years ago in cooperation with several financial institutions that required a more efficient mechanism for improving data quality and timeliness.

The Avox operational model is unique in the industry. Its success stems from the continuous enhancement and customization programs in place for each client. Financial institutions participating in Avox form a Community that collectively addresses poor client, issuer and counterparty data quality. The Community participants, which include some of the largest banks and asset managers in the world, both contribute and subscribe to a shared pool of data, processes and resources.