The Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) Foundation published a report stating that in banking alone, senior salespeople can spend up to 1.5 days of their week onboarding new clients. Meanwhile, the LEI has been adding a lot of value to the KYC (Know Your Customers) process. It is a standardized and global organization identifier, centrally maintained by the Global LEI System, and each LEI is maintained in a free-to-use database of the organization identities. In KYC it can be used to verify organization identity attributes and acts as a connector between different sources of organization data.

Within the Global LEI System, over 2 million LEIs have been registered to date, with the Global LEI Foundation targeting 20m LEIs in use by 2027. A key challenge is to now make sure that more organizations have an LEI. To help counter this challenge and drive LEI registrations, the Global LEI Foundation created the Validation Agent program that gives FIs the ability to register LEIs in bulk using their existing KYC/onboarding process – more accurate, timelier, and more cost-effective. At this juncture, Ubisecure— an identity services technology company and accredited LEI Issuer —created the LEI Everywhere program to deploy the Validation Agent model using API integration and favorable business terms.

Ubisecure’s LEI registration automation opens the use of LEIs to a broad range of use cases, including real-time registration and usage in KYC and onboarding. Its advanced technology optimizes the use of LEIs and improves the data accuracy for both initial onboarding and client refresh cycles by connecting directly to the many business registries around the world. “We help organizations embrace the global digital identity ecosystem, improve operational effectiveness and build trusted business relationships,” explains Steve Waite, CMO, Ubisecure.

What makes the company stand out is the Ubisecure Identity Platform—an Identity & Access Management solution deployed either via the cloud, on-premises or via a hybrid approach that supports a broad range of customer identity-centric use cases. From customer registration-as-a-service to Single Sign-On (SSO), and risk-based authentication, the platform can support individual and organization KYC requirement of its clients. “We follow a “configure not code” approach to ensure that organizations can gain benefits of modern identity management without the need to build a solution themselves,” points Waite.

Ubisecure supports the collection, aggregation, and exchange of user attributes. The core functioning includes normalizing data from multiple sources and masking user data to meet minimum information disclosure principles. The advanced capabilities within the Ubisecure IAM stack help organizations provide better user experiences for their customers while helping use digital identity to reduce fraud and maintain compliance. For example, as well as supporting LEI-based organization identity use cases, service providers use the platform to allow their customers to “bring your own identity (BYOI)” and authenticate to the service using their existing, reusable, individual digital identity which could be as strong as a verified Bank ID, or as easy to use as a social media ID. This approach speeds up onboarding and enhances KYC to those organizations that tap into the ecosystem. “We are perhaps the only IAM technology provider that has a focus on both individual identity and organization identity,” adds Waite.

In countries where digital identity schemes with reusable electronic IDs are not mature, or do not exist, Ubisecure supports identity verification using government-issued identity documents and facial biometrics. This will help KYC providers even further as the individual and their rights to represent an organization can be established and verified in real-time.

An instance that portrays the company’s value proposition is when the team worked with the Finnish Government to develop a rights delegation solution to be used in government-to-business transactions. The Finnish business registry acted as the initial trust anchor where the CEO is identified. The Ubisecure Identity Platform manages how that CEO can create additional organization users and their rights. Rights are defined in digital mandates and could be delegated onwards to employees, or externally to other individuals at other organizations. This allowed the organization to allow representatives to complete tasks such as tax submissions without face-to-face appearances or detailed paperwork, thereby simplifying digital relationships.

In a nutshell, Ubisecure is a technology company with a history of building online identity solutions. The company is on a mission to provide a single platform that enables high-assurance, cross-border interactions, with the focus on reducing fraud and avoiding data breaches.

The recent year was hugely successful for Ubisecure with significant revenue growth. In 2022, the team is planning to build on that success by further expanding across Europe with the IAM software and cloud services business. “We will enhance our cloud IAM (IDaaS) offering and also build further regional-specific online fraud detection capabilities via our risk-based authentication framework. We will also continue to roll out services that build on the ‘representation governance’ concept we’re pioneering. Meanwhile, a big focus for us in 2022 and beyond is expanding the team with the right people who understand the value and potential digital identity holds to help achieve our mission,” concludes Waite.