Overview
ISO/TR 24371:2025, "Financial services - Natural person identifier (NPI) - Natural person identifier lifecycle operation and management," is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) technical report. It outlines regulatory, business, and risk mitigation specifications crucial for the implementation, operation, and governance of Natural Person Identifier (NPI) policies and procedures. The main aim is to support the full lifecycle of NPIs, providing foundations for global, safe, and interoperable identification management in financial services.
This document does not specify the NPI's structure itself-that detail is provided by ISO 24366-but instead focuses on the strategic, operational, and risk elements necessary to ensure the secure and effective use of NPIs. NPIs are essential for enabling cross-border, compliant, and privacy-preserving identification of individuals during financial operations.
Key Topics
- Regulatory and Business Requirements
- Identifies global stakeholder expectations.
- Addresses privacy protection and regulatory compliance for both customers and employees.
- Highlights needs for consumer protection in digital financial services.
- Risk Mitigation
- Details risk types including compliance, cybersecurity, fraud, identity management, data quality, and reputational risks.
- Outlines comprehensive risk mitigation strategies and policies across the NPI lifecycle.
- NPI Lifecycle Management
- Sets requirements for safe creation, operation, use, suspension, restoration, and revocation of NPIs.
- Defines best practices and describes processes for enrolment, issuance, administration, and governance.
- Governance and Operational Procedures
- Discusses the importance of governance models and federations resembling those used for the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI).
- Artikulates the responsibilities of NPI issuers and relying parties (such as financial institutions).
- Interoperability and Extensibility
- Emphasizes that NPIs must be globally unique, persistent, interoperable, and compatible with both national identifiers and international standards.
- Supports the integration of NPIs within various digital ID systems and financial reference data frameworks.
Applications
NPIs have broad, practical uses across financial and regulatory ecosystems:
- Financial Transactions
- Facilitate secure and privacy-preserving identification of individuals in payments, cards, securities, trading, and crypto assets.
- Regulatory Compliance
- Aid organizations in meeting know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements without exposing personal data.
- Enhance authorities’ ability to monitor, investigate, and prevent financial crime and fraud.
- Operational Efficiency
- Reduce costs and friction in straight-through processing across borders and institutions.
- Enable seamless and compliant cross-border operations in digital and traditional finance.
- Digital and Social Inclusion
- Support countries in advancing digital maturity and inclusion by providing a reliable, interoperable identification solution for citizens.
- Data Protection and Privacy
- Allow organizations to provide services while safeguarding individual privacy, meeting increasing regulatory expectations worldwide.
Related Standards
ISO/TR 24371:2025 is a foundational part of a suite of standards for interoperable identity management in financial services:
- ISO 24366: Specifies the structure, format, and reference attributes for NPIs, establishing them as machine-readable, unambiguous, and globally unique identifiers.
- ISO/IEC 29115: Provides frameworks and terminology used for authentication and entity verification.
- Additional References: Includes best practices and insight from leading organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD, and insights related to national ID systems.
By following ISO/TR 24371:2025, organizations can implement robust, interoperable, and secure NPI frameworks that meet evolving global regulatory standards while supporting privacy, operational efficiency, and digital innovation in the financial sector.