1. What is the mission and vision of GLEIF?
GLEIF’s vision is one verifiable, trusted, global identity behind every business. Its mission is to empower global trust and transparency through open, digital, and reliable organizational identity services.
GLEIF advances this mission through the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and its digital counterpart, the verifiable LEI (vLEI). The LEI is a globally standardized code that enables clear and unique identification of legal entities. The vLEI extends verified organizational identity into the digital domain, enabling counterparties to computationally verify the identity, authority, and role of a person acting on behalf of a legal entity.
Together, the LEI and vLEI support more trusted, efficient, and interoperable business relationships across borders, sectors, and digital ecosystems.
2. Why is trustworthy digital identity critical for existing and emerging markets?
Digital trust depends on knowing which organization is involved in a transaction, relationship, or exchange of information. As business becomes more digital and cross-border, organizations need reliable ways to identify legal entities, counterparties, suppliers, customers, and authorized representatives.
In established markets, trusted organizational identity can reduce friction in compliance, onboarding, payments, reporting, and supply chain due diligence. In emerging markets, it can help organizations demonstrate their legitimacy, access services, and participate more confidently in global commerce.
The LEI and vLEI provide a standardized foundation for this trust. They make organizational identity data more consistent, transparent, and reusable across systems and jurisdictions.
3. How will digital identity transform the Canadian and global economy? How does your organization address challenges associated with this transformation?
Digital trust and identity verification can help economies operate with greater confidence by reducing uncertainty about who organizations are, who owns them, and who is authorized to act on their behalf. This is relevant across financial services, payments, supply chains, digital credentials, regulatory reporting, and cross-border trade.
GLEIF addresses these challenges by maintaining and advancing the Global LEI System, an internationally recognized infrastructure for organizational identity. The Global LEI Index makes standardized legal entity reference data openly available, while the vLEI brings verified organizational identity into digital workflows.
This helps create a common identity layer that can be used across sectors and jurisdictions, rather than relying on fragmented, organization-specific approaches.
4. What role does Canada have to play as a leader in this space?
Canada has an opportunity to show how public and private sector collaboration can support trusted, interoperable digital identity ecosystems. Through organizations such as DIACC, Canada is convening the policy, standards, certification, and implementation discussions needed to make digital trust practical and widely adopted.
From GLEIF’s perspective, Canada can play a strong role by aligning domestic digital trust initiatives with globally interoperable standards. This is especially important for organizational identity, where businesses, regulators, and service providers need trusted identity information that works across borders.
By connecting Canadian digital trust initiatives with global identity infrastructure such as the LEI and vLEI, Canada can support services that are locally relevant and internationally interoperable.
5. Why did your organization join the DIACC?
GLEIF joined DIACC to contribute to Canada’s digital trust and identity verification ecosystem and to learn from the organizations shaping it. DIACC brings together public and private sector leaders working on practical frameworks, certification, and adoption pathways for trusted digital services.
As digital wallets, credentials, authentication services, and verification tools continue to develop, they need a reliable organizational identity layer. The LEI and vLEI are designed to support that need.
By joining DIACC as a Sustaining Member, GLEIF aims to support trusted, interoperable organizational identity in Canada and contribute global expertise from the LEI and vLEI ecosystems.
6. What else should we know about your organization?
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) is a not-for-profit organization established by the Financial Stability Board in June 2014. GLEIF supports the implementation and use of the Legal Entity Identifier and the verifiable LEI to advance trusted organizational identity worldwide.
The LEI is used globally to provide clear and unique identification of legal entities. In Q1 2026, the active LEI population surpassed 3 million, reflecting growing demand for standardized organizational identity across sectors and regions. GLEIF is also advancing the vLEI as a digital credential for organizational identity, with ISO 17442-3 published in 2024 to standardize vLEIs across the global LEI ecosystem.