The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and Finbridge Global have announced a new collaboration to enable financial institutions and investors to streamline the identity verification of fintech providers—facilitating partnerships across the global financial services ecosystem.

Finbridge Global is a global platform that enables financial institutions and investors to search, compare, and assess fintech companies from across the world at the product level, reducing the due diligence process. The collaboration will see Finbridge Global introduce the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) to verify the identity of listed fintech providers on the platform, promoting increased transparency, security, and accountability. In addition, Finbridge Global will provide and manage LEIs for fintechs on its platform through its partnership with LEI Worldwide.

An LEI is a unique ISO-standardized 20-character code assigned to a legal entity. Each LEI links to a verified company identity record held in the Global LEI Index, an open, globally recognized data bank that is free for all to access. This enables anyone to verify that an organization is indeed who it claims to be. To date, over 2.7 million LEIs have been issued globally.

Use of the LEI will deliver benefits for all participants across the rapidly-scaling Finbridge Global ecosystem. Fintech providers benefit from a globally recognized and trusted verified identity to demonstrate their commitment to transparency and enhance their credibility, enabling them to connect to the wider marketplace more quickly and efficiently.

For financial institutions and investors, the LEI streamlines due diligence and procurement processes by enabling the unambiguous digital identification of potential fintech partners or prospects. LEI data can also be used to map corporate structures and relationships, enabling better understanding of the interconnections between legal entities, allowing the broader risks posed by organizations operating internationally to be more accurately assessed.

Alexandre Kech, CEO, GLEIF, comments: "While the dynamism of the global fintech sector is helping to transform the delivery of financial services, many potential partnerships are inhibited as financial institutions and investors lack the information needed to meet stringent due diligence requirements. Integrating the LEI into the Finbridge Global platform addresses this challenge by setting a new standard of trust that accelerates and enhances KYC and KYB processes—promoting faster onboarding and enabling financial institutions and investors to operate with confidence. This is a catalyst for broader fintech adoption worldwide, ensuring all organizations can seize new opportunities while safeguarding their reputations and credibility."

Barbara Gottardi, CEO and founder, Finbridge Global, comments: "We're excited to collaborate with GLEIF to address the growing challenges of identity verification and fraud in the financial industry and beyond. By embedding LEIs into our platform, we offer financial institutions and investors a frictionless and instant means of verifying that fintech companies are who they say they are, while preserving data privacy and confidentiality. This is a pivotal step toward creating a unified, globally recognized identity management system that speeds up the establishment of new partnerships, while elevating industry standards.”