The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and the BIS have unveiled a prototype demonstrating how the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) can cut compliance costs and streamline onboarding for SMEs making cross-border payments and opening business accounts via open banking and open finance APIs.
The prototype, developed under Project Aperta — an initiative of the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre — has built a “network of networks” connecting existing domestic open finance infrastructures across the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Hong Kong, and India via a neutral interoperability layer. When an organisation identifies itself using an LEI, the system is able to streamline the KYC/B and anti-money laundering checks that would otherwise require manual processing, cutting both the time and duplication involved in cross-border compliance.
The project directly responds to a structural problem in international finance: domestic open finance frameworks are built around differing technical standards, data formats, and trust frameworks, making them fundamentally resistant to cross-border interoperability. For SMEs in particular, this has historically meant repeated document submissions, drawn-out onboarding, and constrained access to overseas credit and trade finance. Project Aperta demonstrates that connecting these fragmented domestic networks can ease data flows across jurisdictions and open up more integrated banking and trade finance services.
The prototype also signals a potential role for the LEI beyond traditional finance. By enabling verified legal entity data to be exchanged between financial institutions, digital asset platforms, and regulators, Project Aperta points to the identifier’s possible contribution to transparency, risk management, and regulatory oversight in tokenised finance and cross-border digital asset transactions.
GLEIF is the global body responsible for implementing and overseeing the LEI system, which provides unique, standardised identifiers for organisations participating in financial transactions. The LEI is already referenced in more than 300 regulations worldwide and has become a foundational tool for KYC/B due diligence, sanctions screening, and regulatory reporting.
The initiative addresses two specific pain points set out in the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, and has attracted backing from a broad coalition of regulators and industry bodies. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Central Bank of Brazil, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, with participation from GLEIF, the International Chamber of Commerce Digital Standards Initiative, and the Hong Kong University Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy. The prototype was also tested with private-sector commercial banks and FinTechs. The project builds on growing recognition of the LEI’s role in cross-border payments from bodies including the Financial Action Task Force, the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, the Wolfsberg Group, and the Swift Payment Market Practice Group.
GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech said, “Any web of domestic networks that seeks to make legal entity data portable across borders needs a globally standardised system of verified organisational identity. The Global LEI System serves this purpose precisely: it helps infrastructure, businesses, and entities make verified business data as widely available as possible, globally. When the LEI is added as a data attribute in a cross-border payment message, or consulted in a business account opening process, the associated legal entity can be precisely, instantly, and automatically identified across borders. We’ve been delighted to collaborate with the Bank for International Settlements to showcase these capabilities as part of Project Aperta.”
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