Business Solutions
Standards are not just for geeks
Guest blogger, Chris Pickles, head of industry initiatives, BT, says the Standards Forum was the highlight of the Sibos Toronto 2011 conference. Attendees were standing in the aisles to hear the latest news about the ISO Legal Entity Identifier.There’s no letting up at Sibos, even on the last day of the conference. Knowing that a gathering like this one won’t happen again anywhere else in the world for another year, you have to make sure that you do get to all of the people who you came to see. Despite the feeling that you’ve covered every foot of the exhibition hall at least 10 times over for the last four days, you still bump into people from all corners of the world that you haven’t seen until now. There are always some more business cards to add to the pile in your pocket to be followed up when you get back to the office.
The Standards Forum was really one of the most active areas of the hall throughout Sibos, and today perhaps even more so. Despite the evil rumour that standards are for geeks, attendees were standing in the aisles to listen to the discussion on the ISO Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), with panellists representing FIX Protocol Ltd, the US OFR, ESMA and ISO. For many of the people in the audience it was the first chance that they have had to discuss with experts what the LEI is going to mean and when it’s expected to get going.
As always happens, the LEI initiative is not the only one that is underway at the moment, as apparently there is parallel work going on in the EU around standardised entity identifiers as well. Hopefully, by bringing everyone to the table for open participation with equal rights to decide on how things happen, the kind of risk management utility service that the industry needs will be developed faster and will be used by financial institutions and regulators around the world.