The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) announced that E-Arbitrator has been approved as the latest validation agent (VA) within the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) System. E-Arbitrator becomes the first VA of Bloomberg Finance, a GLEIF-accredited LEI Issuer and a wholly owned subsidiary.
E-Arbitrator is an enterprise legal risk management platform for businesses and organizations involved in complex legal transactions and cross-border trade. As VA, E-arbitrator will facilitate LEI issuance for contact management as well as dispute resolution case management across key African markets, including Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Egypt, and South Africa.
This service is integral to E-Arbitrator’s onboarding and KYC management processes, ensuring that LEIs are provided at the onset of disputes and seamlessly integrated into due diligence and contract life cycle management. This initiative is central to E-Arbitrator’s strategy for enhancing KYC processes and mitigating legal risk.
As a global, open identity standard, the LEI plays a critical role in enhancing transparency, ensuring accurate party identification, and supporting effective risk mitigation and due diligence both before and after dispute resolution. E-Arbitrator also manages LEI renewals, ensuring the arbitration process incorporates up-to-date and validated global identities—a cornerstone of trust in digital transactions.
Angelo Kweli, CEO at E-Arbitrator, said in a statement: “The LEI links to a global repository of validated business data, enhancing transparency in contract and dispute resolution processes. By facilitating LEI issuance, we simplify due diligence for all parties involved. Additionally, the globally recognized LEI can be applied by our clients to a wide range of high-risk commercial contracts and transactions—such as insurance policies, supplier agreements, construction contracts, and other agreements—where the potential for disputes is significant.”
E-Arbitrator has offices in Kigali, Rwanda, and Los Angeles in the US, providing legal risk management solutions, including contract management, KYC processes, and online Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) tools. The platform is used by arbitrators, arbitral institutions, and in-house legal counsel in over 45 countries Worldwide.
Alexandre Kech, CEO at GLEIF, said in a statement: “The LEI is a uniquely powerful proposition for bringing transparency to online platforms. By becoming a Validation Agent, E-Arbitrator is leading in offering clients a trusted identity credential that streamlines digital verification processes.”
Broader use of the LEI in cross-border dispute settlements can save parties valuable time and money. While Alternative Dispute Resolution services can efficiently enable parties to settle disputes, cross-border commercial disputes are complicated by different legal frameworks and identification schemes for legal entities.
The LEI addresses this challenge by offering businesses a single, universally recognized form of identification, which also confirms their legal standing and contractually binding authority. Utilizing the LEI and verifiable LEI (vLEI) significantly enhances counterparty verification processes, promoting safer cross-border transactions and addressing many of the underlying risks that lead to disputes. If dispute resolution is required, the use of the LEI to verify the identities of all involved parties ensures the accuracy of settlement agreements and final resolutions.
Steve Meizanis, global head of symbology, FIGI and LEI services at Bloomberg, said in a statement: “Validation Agents play an integral role in facilitating LEI issuance, supporting international efforts to bolster trust and transparency in cross-border exchanges of goods and data.”
E-Arbitrator joins a growing international network of VAs that supports legal entities and LEI issuers across Africa, Australasia, China, Europe, India, the Middle East, and North America.