Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)-accredited Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) issuer, Ubisecure, today announced a new LEI-based Pilot via its RapidLEI service to bring banks easy access to, and management of, LEIs for Know Your Customer (KYC) and onboarding workflows.

The new LEI-based Pilot includes live lookups to the global LEI database, with on-demand LEI issuance and SaaS-based lifecycle management of issued LEIs – enabling banks to scale to customer quantities. The Pilot is a tri-party engagement with Ubisecure, the GLEIF as an independent and agnostic party, and the bank – which will be equally invested in realising the benefits of LEI usage.

The banking sector relies on counterparty identification and verification for Client Lifecycle Management in many use cases. The subscription fees for the KYC data and the connection and management of various data points lead to high costs, with the global banking sector spending around $40 billion* on client onboarding annually.

The use of LEIs in KYC and onboarding has the potential to be a significant cost saving tool, as well as having a measurable impact to people and staff productivity, streamlining processes, and improving transparency into available entity data.

The GLEIF commented: “Research conducted by McKinsey on behalf of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has concluded that broader use of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) across the global banking sector could save the industry U.S.$2-4 billion* annually in client onboarding costs alone. The widespread usage of the LEI can generate topline benefits across all stages of the Client Lifecycle Management process for banks, including Know-Your-Customer requirements. We are excited that wider use of the LEI brings such significant potential benefits to the banking sector, and our priority at this stage is to support voluntary adoption of the LEI in banking use cases beyond regulatory reporting so that these benefits can be fully realised.”

Simon Wood, CEO, Ubisecure commented: “The Global LEI System database of organisation identities represent a significant opportunity to streamline KYC and onboarding workflows. Banks in particular have much to gain from utilising and issuing LEIs within their current processes. With our new scalable, LEI-based Pilot, we are focused on helping banks not only use LEIs to notably reduce onboarding costs, but also, importantly, to ensure that LEIs are managed efficiently and securely.”

The Pilot provides a SaaS portal, API and process automation for banks to manage customer LEIs at scale. This includes:

• Automated LEI issuance process – no administrative burden as platform automates or minimises requests for validation data, e-signing, and payment processing.
• API – same-session registration and issuance, reporting, and lifecycle management.
• Bulk registration – register LEIs for clients in bulk.
• Discovery – service will identify issued, lapsed, missing LEIs.
• Automated renewal – avoids lapse risk.
• Full LEI support – issue LEIs to organisations, trusts, and funds.
• Customisable expiry – assistance with customising/aligning the expiration date.
• 24/7 customer support.
• Reduced LEI costs.