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LexisNexis® Legal & Professional, a leading provider of information and analytics, and OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world, are today announcing a new collaboration which adds OpenCorporates legal entity data to the Nexis® Data as a Service portfolio.
Big data technologies are only as effective as the data that powers them. Organizations that tap into more relevant, high-quality data can ask better questions, uncover valuable insights and improve decision making.
Standardized and provenanced legal entity data
OpenCorporates is the leading source of global legal entity data, with information on more than 165 million companies in more than 130 jurisdictions.
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, explains,“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.” Taggart believes that “There is almost no section of the business world, and those that regulate and service it, that does not use legal entity data.”
Providing Crucial data to Risk Management professionals
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.
“Legal entity data tells us the core facts for a company most importantly does it exist, what’s the type and status when was it incorporated, who are the directors and what other companies have they been directors of,” notes Taggart. “This is absolutely critical and that’s why our data has so often been used by lawyers and banks as part of their KYC and AML processes,” he says.
Helping Companies to enrich data and improve AI
Legal entity data can help companies to gain more value and business insights from big data initiatives and the legal entity provides a strong foundation. Taggart explains,“When you've got skewed, bad, opaque or incomplete data going into a technological system, the chances are low of AI, deep learning or machine learning making sense of it and coming out with useful algorithms or insights.”
When combined with other datasets, such as PEPs and sanctions lists, Legal entity data helps to further enhance compliance risk management and find connections within the data.
Legal entity data can also improve the value of the data that companies already hold, by providing additional context. Taggart notes,“Legal entity data can enrich existing data. Because this comes from the official source, it has a legal standing and authority not available from other data.”
Increasing visibility of financial crime
Legal entity data also empowers investigations into suspected financial crime. The global nature of OpenCorporates data allows journalists, law enforcement, asset recovery lawyers and others to uncover patterns, relationships and anomalies that indicate tax evasion, immigration fraud and other illegal or unethical activities.
Working together for transparency
Todd Larsen, President of Nexis® Solutions, a division of LexisNexis Legal & Professional, says,“We are delighted to join forces with OpenCorporates because their trusted, provenanced, official company data allows us to solve more problems for our clients. Extending access to legal entity data will allow our clients to gain new insights from data more quickly and efficiently than ever before.”
He adds,“If legal entity data is widely and transparently accessible, it supports transparency, trust and the rule of law across the world, which fits strongly with the ethical ambitions of LexisNexis and the RELX Group.”
OpenCorporates is a public benefit organisation that makes company data open and accessible to all and supports open data more broadly, this activity is overseen by the OpenCorporates Trust. Chris Taggart, CEO of OpenCorporates, says,“We are particularly pleased with this relationship, not just because it will expand the number of entities using OpenCorporates but because our values around public benefit, trust and transparency are so closely aligned with those of LexisNexis.”
About LexisNexis Legal & Professional
LexisNexis Legal & Professional (lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of legal, regulatory and business information and analytics that help customers increase productivity, improve decision-making and outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 130 countries with 10,000 employees worldwide, is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries.
The Nexis® Solutions division of LexisNexis Legal & Professional serves companies and organizations across the globe, offering premier news, corporate information and public records through a portfolio of solutions, including the flagship and award-winning Nexis®. This unique combination of market-leading content and innovative technology helps business professionals make more insightful decisions by offering them quick and easy access to the latest news, facts and insights regarding their brand, clients, prospects, competitors, suppliers and industry trends.
About OpenCorporates
OpenCorporates (opencorporates.com) is building the global map of company data, collecting all the world’s official public information on companies, and using it to build a company dataset fit for the modern data-driven world standardized, accurate, provenanced and open. It is already the largest open database of companies in the world with over 165 million companies in 130 jurisdictions which powers KYC solutions, anti-corruption investigations and business intelligence.
It has a unique public-benefit structure with a set of world-renowned trustees to guarantee its independence and its mission of making company information more widely available for the public benefit. This governance, data and expertise is allowing it to become the world’s underlying supplier of foundational company data for the good of business and for society.
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sam.hemmant[.]lexisnexis.co.uk 
