Francesca Hobson In December 2020, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) announced the development of its verifiable LEI development programme. The vision of the programme is for collaboration on the development of a verifiable LEI (vLEI) – a cryptographically verifiable credential containing the LEI.
Against this background, I sat down with RapidLEI partner Vorna ID’s board member and experienced financial markets leader, Matias Johansson, to discuss his take on the vLEI programme, and how Vorna ID plan to take part.
Vorna ID is an LEI-based B2B customer authentication and authorisation service, leveraging RapidLEI’s automation technology. Read more about the partnership in our press release here (March 2020).
F: First, how’s it all going at Vorna ID? Tell us a little bit about your journey in 2020.
M: It’s going well, thank you. We were fortunate to secure initial funding for the identification of market opportunities by Business Finland’s Digital Trust programme. The programme helps Finnish companies build global business on digital trust and security.
In June, shortly after the press release you mentioned, we launched Vorna ID in the Finnish market with multiple partners at our own Digital Live event. Chris Hudson from RapidLEI also gave a great presentation introducing the LEI to the many digital identity professionals.
And since then we’ve been working on national-level B2G (business-to-government) and B2B (business-to-business) customer opportunities in several sectors, such as manufacturing and financial services. So all round, an exciting year despite the obvious challenges.
F: How exciting is the vLEI programme?
M: It’s very exciting for us especially given all the activity now in B2C Self Sovereign Identity and what it could mean for future B2B use cases. For example, the vLEI could provide reliable information about the organisation’s decision makers, which could be used in defining the organisation’s main users for a given digital resource.
Vorna ID already has experience in trust services requirements and with remote identification, made possible by the new eIDAS regulation, this opens up opportunities for further advances in the automation of onboarding processes.
F: What do you see as the opportunities from the vLEI?
M: We all know that B2B relationships can be fairly complex when it comes to sharing and using confidential data. There’s an obvious market opportunity in leveraging verifiable credentials, such as the vLEI, in identity management to streamline online transactions. This kind of digital identity information could be used online, for example, over an OpenID Connect claim or in off-line transactions in decentralised identity networks, for example in blockchain transactions.
F: What about Vorna ID specifically – how are you responding to this news?
M: We’re working alongside RapidLEI, as our LOU (Local Operating Unit), in a strategic partnership to enable new digital identity use cases. Our target for this year is to execute pilot projects for governmental and financial services use cases. For us, the vLEI could also enable automated business partner onboarding and identity governance, which were also looking into.
F: What else does 2021 hold for Vorna ID?
M: Naturally, a big part will be working with current customer cases with our reseller and consulting partners here in Finland. In addition, we’re planning to participate in development projects within a Finnish manufacturing co-creation ecosystem, DIMECC.
Find upcoming online events and more about Vorna ID at vornaid.com
About The Author: Francesca Hobson
As Senior Marketing Manager, Francesca aims to provide valuable insights on digital identity through our Let's Talk About Digital Identity podcast, blogs, industry events and content library.
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