LexisNexis Legal & Professional announced on February 14, 2109, a new collaboration with OpenCorporates to add legal entity data to the Nexis Data as a Service portfolio. OpenCorporates provides open access global legal entity data, with information on more than 165 million companies in more than 130 jurisdictions. According to the announcement, “OpenCorporates legal entity data is standardized, giving a consistent view of all registers, and provenanced, providing direct line of sight to the original source i.e. the company registry itself.” Chris Taggart, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenCorporates, states: “Legal entities are the building blocks of business all around the world, having the power to enter into contracts, and have assets and liabilities, and thus this data is essential for business…There is almost no section of the business world, and those that regulate and service it, that does not use legal entity data.”
In terms of risk management, “identifying the legal entity is a crucial component of Know Your Customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) programs… without universal access to official company records (including registries) due diligence is not only more expensive and difficult, but may not satisfy AML requirements.”
