ABC Bank has secured certification as a Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) Bank by the London Stock Exchange. This makes ABC Bank among the first Banks in East Africa to obtain such status.
The certification comes ahead of the global enforcement of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation starting 1st January 2018.
The LEI regulation was introduced in May 2014 at the behest of the G20 countries after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. LEI is a unique code used across the globe to identify organizations that engage in financial markets, and is intended to bring comfort of corporate identity, particularly in financial transactions.
The publicly available data pool serves as a global directory, which greatly enhances transparency in the marketplace. Besides enabling companies and regulators to identify parties to financial transactions instantly and accurately, it also benefits companies by improving efficiency and internal risk management.
“This certification is critical to ABC Bank because we are very active in the international financial markets, hence the need for us to be a recognized participant in the larger financial ecosystem even outside of East Africa. This will avail us new international business opportunities since prospective partners will easily and speedily identify us and transact. We believe this certification places us at great advantage vis-a-vis other banks for customers as we can reach a larger pool of counterparties and offer finer pricing for customers ” said ABC Bank General Manager for Treasury and Financial Institutions, Mr. Philip Wambua.
With the globalization of the financial markets, businesses across the world are grappling with the challenge of developing and implementing a common entity identification system that could serve as a game changer in identifying financial market participants. Once certified, a firm is included in a global data system that connects to key reference information that enables clear and unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions in any jurisdiction.
“We believe that ultimately there should be one identity behind every business. Having an LEI will help to achieve this objective. We are on a journey to increase the rate of LEI adoption so that in the future, the Global LEI Index will capture an increasing number of entities engaging in financial transactions globally, providing a 360-degree view”, states the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) website.
