Trust Talks: Exploring Organizational Identity in the Digital Age

Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)
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Welcome to GLEIF’s podcast series, where we explore the evolving landscape of verifiable organizational identity and digital transformation. Hosted by CEO Alexandre Kech, these episodes bring together industry experts, regulators, and thought leaders to explore how trust can be hardwired into every business relationship to ease global trade and accelerate economic growth around the world. Whether you’re a business professional, policymaker, or simply curious about the power of trusted organizational identities in our interconnected world, this podcast provides the insights you need to stay ahead.   Subscribe now and join us as we explore the future of organizational identity.

  1. Sep 15

    Making Digital Public Infrastructure Work: Trust, Interoperability, and Organizational Identity

    Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is usually debated as a technology question. In this episode, GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech speaks with Pavle Avramovic, Director of Research and Policy at Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) and Research Affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, who argues that the harder problems are governance and coordination. Pavle explains what he found running cross-regulatory workshops in Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Uganda, and earlier at the UK Financial Conduct Authority, where he set up the emerging technologies team: regulators with blended mandates, flat budgets, and no shared view of the entities they all supervise. His thesis is that technical interoperability is already strong and institutional interoperability is not. The conversation covers where the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and the verifiable LEI (vLEI) fit across the three DPI pillars of identity, data sharing, and payments, what an organizational identity layer must prove beyond a static identifier, why the Global LEI System's oversight model is a useful governance reference point, and why identity thinking built for consumers does not transfer cleanly to micro, small, and medium enterprises. The one thing to remember: "DPI is not simply a technology conversation. It is a much bigger conversation that includes governance and regulation, and at the end of the day it includes people." Pavle Avramovic, Financial Innovation for Impact. Read the related GLEIF blog: https://www.gleif.org/en/newsroom/blog/the-missing-layer-how-the-global-lei-system-is-becoming-a-global-digital-public-infrastructure-for-business-identity More at https://linktr.ee/TrustTalks

    Making Digital Public Infrastructure Work: Trust, Interoperability, and Organizational Identity

  2. Sep 3

    From KERI to vLEI: Building Verifiable Organizational Identity

    Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) is the technology underneath the verifiable LEI (vLEI). In this episode, GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech speaks with Sam Smith, its inventor and co-founder of the KERI Foundation. Sam explains the problem he set out to solve: identity on the internet that is not controlled by a central provider, and that stays portable across infrastructure. He describes the cross-trust domain transfer problem, the point at which organizations operating across systems, borders, and providers run out of ways to verify each other, and why starting at the key management layer changes what is possible above it. The conversation covers why the economics of attacking systems have shifted, how KERI's pre-rotation design handles migration to post-quantum cryptography, what building the vLEI taught the protocol about delegation and recovery, and where Sam sees adoption moving next: telecommunications, healthcare data exchange, state-endorsed digital identity, and authorization for AI agents. The one thing to remember: "Your digital twin should be under your control, not somebody else's." Sam Smith, inventor of KERI. More at https://linktr.ee/TrustTalks

    From KERI to vLEI: Building Verifiable Organizational Identity

  3. Jun 29

    Beyond Digitization: The Trusted Identity Imperative for Global Trade

    As global trade moves from paper to fully digital ecosystems, the harder problem is no longer digitization. It is interoperability and trust at scale. In this episode of Trust Talks, GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech is joined by Avanee Gokhale, Head of Industry Insights and Global Head of Trade at Swift and Vice Chair of the ICC Digital Standards Initiative Industry Advisory Board, to examine why fragmented systems, inconsistent standards adoption, and weak identity frameworks continue to slow progress. Drawing on the ICC DSI roadmap, Avanee explains why digitizing a document is not the same as digitizing a process, and why trade only scales when data is machine-readable, verifiable, and reusable across organizations, platforms, and jurisdictions. The conversation centers on portable trust: the idea that if one party has already verified an organization, that trust should be reusable across the ecosystem rather than recreated at every step. Alexandre and Avanee discuss why identity is the bottleneck, how the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and the verifiable LEI (vLEI) are becoming foundational infrastructure rather than regulatory checkboxes, and what the shift toward agentic AI means for "know your agent." They also cover Swift's work on standards and a shared ledger, the move toward a network of networks, and how to align public- and private-sector incentives. The one thing to remember is that digital trade does not scale through digitization alone. It scales when trust, data, and value move across networks as seamlessly as goods move across borders. Listen now: linktr.ee/TrustTalks

    Beyond Digitization: The Trusted Identity Imperative for Global Trade

  4. May 27

    Setting the Standard: Interoperability, Identity, and Data in a Digital World

    As traditional and digital asset markets increasingly operate side by side, the question is no longer whether standards matter, but whether the standards we already have can evolve fast enough to keep data connected across systems and jurisdictions. In Episode 11 of Trust Talks, GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech speaks with Laura Stanley, Director of Entity Data and Symbology at London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Vice Chair of the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) Board. Drawing on a cross-market view of symbology and standards, Laura makes the case that interoperability depends less on new identifiers and more on connecting and evolving the ones already in place. In this episode: - Why standardized identifiers such as the LEI, ISIN, CFI, and SEDOL are the backbone of market infrastructure, beyond regulatory reporting - How the ISIN has stayed fit for purpose for more than 40 years through systematic review and market feedback - Where coverage gaps remain, including loans and digital assets - What LSEG's winning project at GLEIF's Global vLEI Hackathon showed about reducing friction in identity resolution - Why the shift to decentralized finance will be an evolution, not a sudden switch, and what coexistence requires of data standards What's the One Thing? Laura Stanley: "The identifier is more than just a code, and all of the data that comes with it is really important."

    Setting the Standard: Interoperability, Identity, and Data in a Digital World

  5. Apr 15

    Proactive Post-Trade: Data, Digital Channels, and Verifiable Identity on the Road to T+1

    Europe's move to T+1 settlement by October 2027 is putting pressure on every link in the post-trade chain. Matching, confirmation, settlement, collateral management, liquidity — all of it needs to move faster, and with far fewer errors.    In this episode, GLEIF CEO Alexandre Kech sits down with Maria Keller, Head of Data, Channels and Digital Operations at Clearstream, part of Deutsche Börse Group, to explore what that shift demands from post-trade data infrastructure — and how Clearstream is responding.    They discuss:  - Why instruction quality is the real bottleneck on the path to straight-through processing  - How AI is enabling clients to interrogate their own post-trade data in natural language  - The role of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) in reducing friction in cross-border settlement  - Clearstream's runner-up recognition at the GLEIF Hackathon for using the verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI) as a secure login standard  - What "proactive" post-trade operations actually look like in practice    "High-quality data creates trust. And trust is really important if we want to move to the next level of financial markets." — Eva-Maria Keller

    Proactive Post-Trade: Data, Digital Channels, and Verifiable Identity on the Road to T+1

  6. Mar 17

    Who’s Behind the Smart Contract? Advancing Trust Layers for Tokenized Finance

    Who’s behind the smart contract? In this episode of Trust Talks, host Alexandre Kech, CEO of GLEIF, speaks with Thomas A. Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust and Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation, about why secure and verifiable organizational identity is becoming a foundational layer of trust for tokenized finance. They explore why it is still so difficult to answer a basic question in digital asset markets: who is behind the smart contract and the wallet? The conversation examines how the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and verifiable LEI (vLEI) can help connect on-chain and off-chain governance, strengthen accountability, support regulatory alignment, and make smart contract execution more trusted and auditable. Alexandre and Thomas also discuss the risks created by anonymous smart contract deployment, the strategic opportunity for institutions that can embed identity into programmable finance, and why interoperability and cross-chain trust will be essential to scaling digital asset markets. Listen to this and all upcoming episodes of Trust Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Subscribe or follow now.

    Who’s Behind the Smart Contract? Advancing Trust Layers for Tokenized Finance

  7. Feb 12

    Open Standards for Trust: How Interoperability Drives Adoption in Digital Finance

    In this episode of Trust Talks, host Alexandre Kech (CEO, GLEIF) speaks with Pelle Brændgaard (Co-Founder & CEO, Notabene) about why open standards consistently outperform closed networks when scale, adoption, and trust matter most.  They explore how organizational identifiers such as the LEI and vLEI can enable faster, more reliable counterparty verification and help shift compliance from reactive checks to pre-transaction decision-making under frameworks such as FATF Recommendation 16 (the Travel Rule). The conversation also covers how open messaging and verification layers can reduce friction in cross-border and digital-asset payments, and how products like Notabene Flow aim to translate interoperability into real operational workflows for institutions and businesses. Key themes Why open-loop networks win (payments and the internet as reference cases) LEI/vLEI as practical trust anchors for businesses in multi-network ecosystems Pre-transaction verification as the operating model for instant settlement Interoperability as a measurable adoption lever, not a “nice-to-have.”

    Open Standards for Trust: How Interoperability Drives Adoption in Digital Finance

  8. Jan 8

    Powering Cross-Border Trust and Interoperability in the Greater Bay Area with the vLEI

    In this episode of the Trust Talks podcast, GLEIF’s CEO, Alexandre Kech, sits with Eva Chan, CEO of Certizen Technology and Chair at the Asia PKI Consortium, to discuss ongoing projects focused on promoting cross-border trust and interoperability in Asia.   Following its qualification as a Qualified vLEI Issuer (QVI) in 2025, Certizen Technology is exploring innovative vLEI use cases in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). This unique region, which encompasses three jurisdictions with distinct currencies and legal frameworks, provides the ideal setting to explore the vLEI’s potential as a key enabler of cross-border digital trust across industries such as education, healthcare, and ESG.

    Powering Cross-Border Trust and Interoperability in the Greater Bay Area with the vLEI
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About

Welcome to GLEIF’s podcast series, where we explore the evolving landscape of verifiable organizational identity and digital transformation. Hosted by CEO Alexandre Kech, these episodes bring together industry experts, regulators, and thought leaders to explore how trust can be hardwired into every business relationship to ease global trade and accelerate economic growth around the world. Whether you’re a business professional, policymaker, or simply curious about the power of trusted organizational identities in our interconnected world, this podcast provides the insights you need to stay ahead.   Subscribe now and join us as we explore the future of organizational identity.

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