Read our insights

The recent High Court tracker mortgage decision again brought sharply into focus the onerous nature of potential remediation exercises. Increasing regulatory pressure, ever-changing customer expectations, rising customer vulnerability and a competitive marketplace, deem an increase in remediation requirements for financial services firms highly likely.

Money laundering is on the rise globally. Between 2016 and 2021, the yearly number of cases brought to the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation doubled, bringing the total number of registered cases for that period to 3,000. In Ireland alone, the number of recorded money laundering crimes increased significantly from 86 in 2018 to 701 in 2021.

Why is Microsoft making this investment and integrating ChatGPT into its full product suite? What does ChatGPT mean for businesses? Artificial intelligence is not a new concept, so what is new about ChatGPT? The key difference is that it has optimised human dialogue and language. This means you do not need to be an AI guru to interact with it and find the answers you need.

For many businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic’s manifestation as a black-swan event highlighted the shortcomings of the organisation’s risk awareness and risk management ability. In 2023 and beyond, the need for a trusted Internal Audit business partner, with a truly enterprise-wide risk lens, has emerged as a must-have rather than an optional extra. Knowing yourself, and in particular knowing which areas pose the greatest risks to your organisation are critical in today’s business and regulatory environment.

Technology plays a large part in the personal and professional lives of the majority of people. Not only is it an enabler to everyday business-as-usual tasks, but for most, they could not effectively do their job without it. So, while implementation of a new system can be transformational for your organisation, without adequate buy-in from your people, it can be difficult to land a new system successfully. We highlight four key ways you can use people-led change to achieve and sustain a successful system implementation.

Are you wondering if your relationship with your ERP has run its course? There are a few ways to tell, say the ‘ERP relationship therapists’ at Grant Thornton

The Central Bank published the Cross Industry Guidance on Operational Resilience in December 2021 expecting firms to be in a position to evidence compliance within two years. It has now issued an Operational Resilience Maturity Assessment to firms in all sectors to assess the level of preparedness in the financial services industry.

Two or more persons may decide to operate as a single VAT registered body for the purposes of VAT - known as a VAT group. To form a VAT group, an application must be made to Revenue and approval is at the discretion of the Revenue.

Revenue have updated the guidance material on the operation of the Section 56 authorisation system. Generally, a VAT registered entity is eligible to apply for a Section 56 authorisation where over 75% of their annual turnover is derived from qualifying sales, namely; intra-community supplies of goods, exports and certain contract work. Revenue will grant the trader a VAT56B authorisation.

On June 5th, the European Securities and Markets Authority (‘ESMA’) published final guidelines on the MiFID II compliance function. The revised Guidelines replace the ESMA guidelines on the same topic issued in 2012. Due to MiFID II reinforcing the existing MiFID I requirements relating to the compliance function, rather than introducing a completely different regime, ESMA has chosen to build upon the text of the 2012 guidelines rather than replace entirely.

Now vaccines are coming on stream and there looks to be light at the end of the tunnel we seem to be faced with a different issue, how do we continue to operate going forward post pandemic?

We have heard for quite a while now how financial institutions are charging “negative interest” on corporate deposits. It was interesting news at the time, but while it didn’t impact personally it was soon forgotten by many. Not now. It is only a matter of time before financial institutions will be charging people for holding personal deposits. In advance of this, what should you do?

EU Mandatory Disclosure reporting rules came into effect in July 2020, however due to the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic the reporting deadline was deferred until January 2021. The first reports are due by the end of January. Are you ready to file your reports with the tax authorities?

On 20 October 2020, the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) published the findings of its thematic review of the implementation of Consultation Paper 86 (CP86) Fund Management Companies – Guidance (Guidance)8. The objective is to set out the standards to be met by the fund management companies (FMCs) including self-managed UCITS and internally managed AIFs in respect of their governance, management, control and resourcing.

Different classes of investment firms will experience different levels of regulatory requirements and supervisory overview tailored to their regulated activities. To identify which category of Investment Firm you are, we outline the characteristics of each of the different classes of investment firms introduced by the new regime.

For businesses and professional’s, uncertainty leads to risk, Accountancy as an industry by its very nature, is exceptionally risk averse.