LexisNexis Expands Data as a Service offering with OpenCorporates legal entity data

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Feb 14, 2019, 02:00 ET

RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- 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.

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."

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 regulatory 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.

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 can help enhance compliance risk management and find connections within the data. Legal entity data can also improve the value of the data that companies hold, by providing additional context.

Increasing visibility of 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 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."

He adds, "If legal entity data is widely 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 organization that makes company data open and accessible to all. This activity is overseen by the OpenCorporates Trust. Chris Taggart, 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."

Learn more about Nexis® Data as a Service

About LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LexisNexis Legal & Professional 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. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 130 countries with 10,000 employees worldwide, is part of the RELX Group.

The Nexis® Solutions division of LexisNexis Legal & Professional serves organizations across the globe, offering premier news, corporate information and public records through a portfolio of solutions, including the award-winning Nexis®.

About OpenCorporates

OpenCorporates 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.

SOURCE LexisNexis