Alexandre Kech’s path to becoming CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has spanned a dynamic intersection of traditional finance, digital innovation, and global infrastructure development.
Alexandre Kech began his career at BNY Mellon, gaining hands-on experience at the core of global financial operations. His transition to SWIFT marked a pivotal shift, where he developed a deep expertise in payment infrastructure and financial messaging standards – elements that underpin scalable and secure global systems.
Alexandre Kech’s career later evolved toward fintech and digital assets. As co-founder of Onchain Custodian in Singapore, he played a foundational role in building custody and prime brokerage solutions tailored for crypto assets. He continued to advance the digital finance agenda as Blockchain & Digital Asset Director at Citi Ventures, collaborating closely with the European ecosystem on innovative blockchain applications. Most recently, he led the Digital Securities vertical at SIX Digital Exchange, further cementing his role at the forefront of digital financial markets.
Across all roles, Alexandre Kech has remained committed to core principles of interoperability, transparency, and trust – values that align seamlessly with GLEIF’s global mission. His appointment as CEO represents a strategic step toward scaling these values on an international level, shaping a more connected and accountable financial ecosystem.
GLEIF at the Forefront of Legal Entity Identification
GLEIF was established in 2014 by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in the wake of the global financial crisis to promote the implementation and use of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), enhancing transparency, mitigating risk, and strengthening regulatory compliance across global financial markets.
The LEI is a standardized and universal means of identifying legal entities engaged in financial transactions and other official interactions. It is a 20-digit alpha-numeric code connected to a verified business registration and information record held in the Global LEI Index, a data bank maintained by GLEIF and made available to everyone, everywhere, free of charge.
GLEIF’s core mandate is to oversee and advance the Global LEI System, which provides unique, standardized identifiers to legal entities worldwide. As part of this mission, GLEIF has also pioneered a secure digital counterpart to the LEI – the verifiable LEI (vLEI) – that meets the urgent global need for automated authentication and verification of legal entities across a range of industries.
Crucially, GLEIF is steadfast in its commitment to governance, transparency, and neutrality. Operating as a supranational, not-for-profit organization under public oversight, GLEIF adheres to rigorous audit and compliance frameworks that ensure accountability and integrity at every level.
The Need for Trusted Organizational Identity in the Digital World
While GLEIF’s roots lay in capital markets, the unique capacity of the LEI and vLEI to enable organizations to trust and be trusted is applicable across all sectors of the emerging digital economy.
For example, aligning identity frameworks across jurisdictions, industries, and regulatory environments offers great potential. A more connected approach enables financial institutions, regulators, and service providers to streamline processes such as onboarding, Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance, and risk assessment – making them more efficient, reliable, and less resource-intensive.
GLEIF is uniquely positioned to solve this problem by providing a globally recognized, open, and interoperable organizational identity framework to enable digitized trust on a global scale. The vLEI offers instant, automated identity verification of legal entities and the people that represent it in official and functional roles, both inside and outside the boundaries of that organization. This verification can be cryptographically bound to official documents, transactions and interactions – ensuring the integrity and authenticity of organizational activity in both physical and digital contexts.
This means GLEIF is playing an increasingly integral role across the evolving global digital infrastructure, with its influence now extending far beyond traditional finance into emerging domains such as decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenized assets, cross-border trade, and global value chains – helping to eliminate identity silos and foster a more secure, transparent, and efficient global economy.
Global Regulatory Momentum
Ongoing global regulatory developments are reinforcing the role of the LEI and the vLEI in advancing transparency, interoperability, and regulatory compliance across jurisdictions and industries.
The LEI is now embedded in over 200 regulatory frameworks and industry standards worldwide, spanning capital markets, trade and transactions, customs, cross-border payments, crypto-assets, digital finance, supervisory reporting, non-financial reporting, insurance, corporate debt-lending, and anti-money laundering.
For example, in a key recent development, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has published its updated Recommendation 16 to enhance payment transparency which, for the first time, references the LEI as a key identifier for legal persons in domestic and cross-border transactions. This will equip financial institutions and regulators with powerful information needed to further develop tools for detecting fraud and combating financial crime.
Elsewhere, emerging initiatives such as eIDAS 2.0 and digital identity wallets within the European Union, alongside SME-focused digital identity programs in Africa and the Middle East, underscore the growing demand for LEI and vLEI integration into next-generation identity infrastructures.
Looking ahead, GLEIF is committed to supporting regulators and policymakers in the adoption of globally harmonized standards. These efforts are designed to strengthen the role of the LEI and vLEI as core components of digital public infrastructure and trusted global systems.
Driving Real-World Impact Through Open Innovation
Supported by this regulatory momentum, GLEIF envisions a future where secure, interoperable, and decentralized digital identity systems become foundational across industries. This transformation promises to reshape how identity and trust are managed in both traditional and digital ecosystems.
To bring this vision to life, GLEIF is working to promote industry collaboration to drive broader voluntary adoption of the LEI and vLEI, advocate for global interoperability and accessibility, and increase the underlying data quality.
Collaboration for Innovation
By fostering cooperation among industry players, GLEIF is driving innovation while staying true to its non-for-profit mission to deliver a ‘broad public good’. It recognizes that building a new global ecosystem for organizational digital identity is a collective endeavor – one that requires cross-sector collaboration, innovation, and shared vision.
Reflecting this commitment, it launched the inaugural vLEI Hackathon in July 2025 to foster open innovation and accelerate real-world adoption of the vLEI. The hackathon is a global innovation challenge inviting developers, entrepreneurs, and policy thinkers to create transformative applications using the vLEI, with participants exploring its potential to revolutionize identity verification and trust across key sectors, including finance, digital assets, and global supply chains.
This initiative was made possible through collaboration with a diverse network of leading partners, including Affinidi, Cardano Foundation, Chainlink, EPA Asia, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Giesecke+Devrient, Hong Kong PKI Forum, ICC Digital Standards Initiative, Key State Capital, SWIFT, Vayana, and the Verifiable.Trade Foundation, among others.
Through the vLEI Hackathon, GLEIF is not only advancing the use of verifiable digital identity – it is also empowering a global community to shape the future of trust, interoperability, and compliance in the digital age. This is complemented by initiatives such as the GLEIF Partners Program, which brings together leading key stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of the LEI and vLEI.
Promoting Global Interoperability and Accessibility
While interoperability is often viewed as a purely technical issue, GLEIF sees it as a significant hurdle preventing equitable access. The organization firmly believes that every entity – regardless of size or geographic location – deserves a secure place in the global economy.
This is why GLEIF is helping to build a digital trust infrastructure that is both technically robust and socially inclusive. A cornerstone of GLEIF’s approach is the promotion of open standards, designed to foster market inclusivity and prevent monopolization. By enabling broad industry participation and collaboration, GLEIF maintains a level playing field and safeguards the LEI ecosystem as a global public good.
This commitment to inclusivity drives GLEIF’s efforts to ensure that the LEI and vLEI are accessible to all organizations, particularly micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and non-profit entities. An example of this mission in action is GLEIF’s collaboration with public and private sector stakeholders to reduce barriers to formal financial services and enhance market participation through verifiable organizational identity.
GLEIF is also working to increase ‘on-the-ground’ engagement and collaboration in regions where the LEI is currently under-represented, bringing it closer to the markets it serves and enabling local businesses to have better access to GLEIF’s expertise and knowledge.
Enhancing Data Quality
A high-quality data ecosystem is a driver of change and innovation that enables organizations to identify and seize new opportunities. At the same time, low data quality can lead to inefficiencies and exposure to regulatory and reputational risks.
Put simply, the credibility of the Global LEI System can only be sustained through a deep commitment to data quality. Promoting harmonized data standards and ensuring open access to trusted data brings powerful benefits to businesses of all sizes. These benefits extend from the largest corporates to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Hardwiring verifiable organizational identity into every business relationship through high-quality data helps address fragmentation and inconsistencies across borders. These issues have traditionally inhibited global trade and economic growth. High-quality data unlocks transformative new opportunities.
A Future Built on Trust
The digital revolution has created unparalleled opportunities and incentives for businesses to trust and be trusted.
The ultimate goal for GLEIF is a future in which every business possesses a verifiable and trusted global identity. This would embed trust into every transaction and relationship, reducing complexity and cost while increasing transparency and accountability across industries.
Such a future holds the potential to lay the foundation for a more secure, inclusive, and efficient global digital economy, easing international trade, accelerating economic development, fueling innovation, and harmonizing identity-related regulation. This can help to address a range of systemic global challenges – including financial fraud, corporate opacity, financial exclusion, friction in cross-border capital flows, environmental compliance burdens, and threats such as money laundering and terrorist financing.
5 Key Takeaways from Alexandre Kech’s Cover Story:
- Alexandre Kech Brings Deep Expertise Across Traditional and Digital Finance
- GLEIF Is a Global Trust Anchor for Organizational Identity
- The vLEI Extends Trust into the Digital Age
- GLEIF Champions Open Innovation and Inclusive Infrastructure
- A Vision for a Secure, Interoperable, and Inclusive Digital Economy
