Saudi Credit Bureau (SIMAH), the 1st licensed & pioneer credit bureau in Saudi Arabia for consumers and commercial, is hosting today Legal Entity Identifier Meet the Market Forum (LEI Meet the Market Forum) under the auspices of SAMA's Vice Governor HE Saleh Al-Furaih and attendance of SIMAH's Chairman of Board of Directors Mr. Saeed Algamdi along with officials from banking, finance, investment an insurance sectors .
LEI is a 20-digit, alpha-numeric code based on the ISO 17442 standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It connects to key reference information that enables clear and unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions.
SIMAH's forum comes as part of the Annual International Meeting of the Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC) and Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) hosted by Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority ( SAMA) . The forum will be attended by officials and representatives of banking and finance sectors, LEI ROC, GLIEF and other international Local Operating Units (LOUs).
Semantically, MOARIF is an Arabic word with the lexicon meaning of identification. As a project, MOARIF has gone through 5 fundamental stages. Start was in 20th July 2015 when it was endorsed by ROC; as an initial step into full operation. In August 2015, MOARIF went life and started issuing legal entities identifiers. After one year , in 16th August 2016, MOARIF was accredited by GLIEF to be a candidate LOU. Master Agreement was singed by SIMAH in 22nd August 2016. In 26th September 2017, MOARIF was officially accredited as an LOU by GLIEF. Every LOU should maintain historical data of any transaction occurring in their own system. These data should include corporate events affecting the entities such as mergers. In addition, the LOU should be able to maintain an audit trail of all changes to the reference data, including technical record creation, updating and retirement.
SIMAH has been accredited officially by GLIEF last September to act as a full LOU. SIMAH has launched its non-profit MOARIF to be utilized to identify legally independent entities and companies. MOARIF allows companies to comply with various reporting requirements, while at the same time enhancing transparency. It helps measure and monitor systemic cross boarder payment transfer risk, enables regulators globally to more accurately obtain a view on risk to the financial system, helps individual firms more effectively measure and manage counterparty exposure through a common view of legal entities across the organization and promotes coordination. MOARIF has issue 191 identifiers.
GLIEF was established by Financial Stability Forum (FSB) in June 2014 as a not-for-profit organization to support the implementation and use of the LEIs and overseen by ROC LEI. ROC is a group of 71 public authorities with full membership and 19 observers from more than 50 countries established in January 2013 to coordinate and oversee a worldwide framework of legal entity identification, the Global LEI System.
MOARIF comes as an outcome of SIMAH Business; a leading and pioneer commercial credit system launched in 2009 as the first corporate system in the MENA region to issue detailed, up-to-date credit reports concerning commercial entities. SIMAH Business is designed to provide credit information to all companies and institutions operating on the Saudi market, representing their financial solvency. This allows members to study the credit behaviors of its commercial clients and to assess credit risk in order to make sound decisions. SIMAH Business becomes a key tool to verify legal entities.