Insights

The Central Bank of Ireland has reminded firms of their obligations to align the governance and oversight of MGA arrangements with the outsourcing requirements set out in Solvency II for Critical or Important Functions or Activities.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a proposed piece of legislation by the European Union that aims to modernize and harmonize the rules governing digital services across the EU.

The Central Bank of Ireland (“CBI”) set out their findings and expectations for Payment and E-Money firms in its “Dear CEO” letter published January 20, 2023. Rather than issuance of specific additional or “new” expectations, it is a re-affirmation of the out regulatory expectations of authorised Payment and E-Money institutions already set out in the December 2021 letter in the same vein. A year on from that letter, it is clear that the CBI believes the industry has a lot more to do.

The Central Bank of Ireland introduced pre-emptive recovery planning requirements in 2021 and all (re)insurance undertakings have been required to have a recovery plan in place since 31 March 2022. Following submission of the first set of recovery plans by High and Medium-High Impact firms, the Central Bank carried out a thematic review and the main observations were communicated to firms.

In May 2022 the European Commission issued a public consultation to gather evidence for its review of the second EU Payment Services Directive (2015/2366), and to inform its continuing work on open finance. The consultation forms part of the Digital Finance Strategy and the Retail Payments Strategy which aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the application and impact of PSD2 to assess whether legislation remains fit for purpose.

This article is a continuation of a series from Grant Thornton Financial Services Advisory that focuses on key aspects of the Individual Accountability Framework (“IAF”). In this article, we discuss the recently released Regulatory Impact Analysis (“RIA”) conducted by the Department of Finance (the “Department”) on the IAF.

Final guidelines on common procedures and methodologies for the supervisory review and evaluation process for investment firms, along with final draft Regulatory Technical Standards on Pillar 2 add-ons for investment firms are published.

The Central Bank of Ireland has announced that the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) rate on Irish exposures is to be maintained at 0.5 per cent.

How Grant Thornton can help you to estimate scope emissions for companies that do not report these metrics and incorporate these into banks’ Climate & Risk Quantification framework.

The Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) has agreed a fast-track filing deadline of 1 December 2022 for Irish authorised UCITS and AIFs filing pre-contractual disclosure templates under A8 and A9 of the Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation (SFDR) which must be published by 1 January 2023.

The introduction of the Consumer Protection Act highlights the Central Bank’s continued focus on consumer protection, with the specific purpose of closing the consumer protection gap in respect of consumer-hire agreements, hire-purchase agreements, including personal contracts plans (PCPs), and other forms of indirect credit such as Buy Now, Pay Later.

Under the fitness and probity (‘F&P’) regime the Central Bank of Ireland (the ‘Central Bank’) assesses the suitability (the fitness and probity) of individuals put forward for a number of senior roles in regulated firms (referred to as pre-approval controlled functions or ‘PCFs’).