ISO New Standards for Digital IDs in Legal Entity Organizational Roles

According to the ISO standard, ISO 5009, by enabling the constant inclusion of “official organizational role” detail, has the potential to increase the usefulness and value of digital identity solutions based on Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs).

Facilitating Global Recognition through LEI-based Digital Certificates

The development of digital certificates with embedded LEIs and verifiable LEI (vLEI) credentials as a globally recognized means of digitally verifying the identity of individuals authorized to act on behalf of a company is made possible by ISO 5009. Unquestionable verification of this authenticity, such as a person’s name and official position, is essential for conducting sensitive business operations online, such remotely approving transactions or electronically signing contracts.

Standardizing Official Organizational Positions

The February 2022 publication of ISO 5009 allows for the worldwide standardization of the jurisdiction-specific, organized listing of official organizational positions. This implies that a legal body may define the roles of individuals acting on behalf of an organization and incorporate those roles into current and future digital assets that use the LEI.

At the moment, digital assets based on LEIs come in two varieties:

Emergence of vLEI Credentials

The vLEI is an automatically checked, digitally reliable version of the 20-digit LEI code that does not require human verification. A legal entity can issue more vLEI credentials to members of the organization who have been given authorization once it has gotten its vLEI.

The vLEI allows for digital verification of each component by including the LEI, an individual’s name, and their role inside a cryptographically secure organizational credential. Official organizational positions can be uniformly expressed in vLEI credentials with the help of ISO 5009.

Integration of LEIs in Digital Certifications

Digital certifications with LEIs incorporated. The optional Role extension present in X.509 public key certificates with embedded LEIs can be standardized using the ISO 5009 standard, as described in ISO 17442.

In order to give the role information included in these two digital tools that are based on LEIs structure and clarity, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) originally proposed the development of the ISO 5009 standard. Leading the development effort was GLEIF, an active participant in ISO/TC 68. The Maintenance Agency was given to the Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV) by the ISO Technical Management Board, and GLEIF took up its duties.

As the operational maintenance agency for the standard, GLEIF will therefore continue to play a significant role in managing the operations of ISO 5009 going forward.

In terms of both governance and functionality, the successful LEI (ISO 17442) is expanded upon by the Official Organizational Roles standard (ISO 5009). There are several applications for ISO 5009 in corporate governance and reporting that haven’t received enough attention up until now. The leadership of GLEIF is extremely beneficial to both ISO TC 68 and society at large, according to a statement from Jim Northey, chair of ISO TC 68 and non-executive director of the FIX Trading Community.

GLEIF’s Commitment to Digital Economy Advancements

The CEO of GLEIF, Stephan Wolf, stated in a statement: “It is crucial to verify the formal functions of individuals representing organizations in business and regulatory transactions. This can be difficult in a digital setting, but it is very vital as we work to establish and maintain a digital global economy. GLEIF has therefore dedicated itself to the implementation of this ISO standard since it represents a major advancement in tackling that difficulty.

An international approach to the incorporation of official organizational function information in digital ID credentials is made possible by the publication of ISO 5009, a standardization milestone. Because of a standardized approach, it will be much simpler—and possibly even more expected—to incorporate role-related data in these credentials. Since LEI-based digital ID technologies can verify the identities of both legal entities and their representatives in formal organizational roles, it is possible that in the future, their extended utility will lead to a greater adoption of these tools.