Customer identity management company Ubisecure has announced a new Legal Entity Identifier-based onboarding pilot service for banks.

The pilot will be based on Ubisecure’s RapidLEI service and aims to give banks easy access to and management of LEIs — unique global identifiers of legal entities taking part in financial transactions — for Know Your Customer (KYC) and onboarding workflows. It will include live access to the global LEI database and on-demand LEI issuance as well as Software-as-a-Service-based lifecycle management of any issue LEIs.

“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,” commented Ubisecure CEO Simon Wood, going on to say that “[w]ith 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 global banking sector spends around $40 billion annually on client onboarding, with the subscription fees for KYC data and the various costs associated with the management of data points leading the way.

The use of LEIs for client onboarding and KYC can potentially save the industry a lot of money, and can also serve to streamline processes, improve transparency and increase staff productivity.

“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,” said a spokesperson for the Global Legal Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). “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,” they added.