Orla Carolan

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Advisory
Audit and Assurance
Corporate Accounting and Outsourcing
Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS)
Financial Services
Private Client Services
Tax and Legal
U.S. Irish Business Group

Advisory

As your business grows, our advisory services are designed to help you achieve your goals.

Business Consulting
Our Consulting team guarantees quick turnarounds, lower partner-to-staff ratio than most and superior results delivered on a range of services.
Business Risk Services
Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
Deal Advisory
Our experienced Deal Advisory team has provided a range of transaction, valuation, deal advisory and restructuring services to clients for the past two decades.
Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
Digital Transformation
Our Digital Transformation team work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
Forensic Accounting
Our Forensic and Investigation Services team have targeted solutions to solve difficult challenges - making the difference between finding the truth or being left in the dark.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal setting framework that helps teams, individuals and organisations set and track measurable goals.
People and Change Consulting
Our People & Change Consulting team help clients adapt to the changing nature of the workforce - how they attract, retain, engage, develop, deploy and lead their people.
Restructuring
Grant Thornton is Ireland’s leading provider of insolvency and corporate recovery solutions.

Our audit approach combines the rigorous standards of professional independence and objectivity, with a methodology that focuses on critical risk areas and...

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Corporate Accounting and Outsourcing

At Grant Thornton we have extensive knowledge and experience in providing tailored solutions to our clients, whether on a short-term or long-term basis.

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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced payroll teams become your dedicated payroll department, aiming to process your payroll in the most cost effective and compliant manner.
Outsourcing
Grant Thornton's reliable and cost-effective outsourcing services help you streamline your business operations by taking care of your workload.

Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS)

Our FAAS team designs and implements creative solutions for organisations expanding into new markets or undertaking functional financial transformations.

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Audit and Accounting Advisory
Our Audit and Accounting Advisory team takes the headache out of multi-jurisdictional audit compliance requirements as well as technical compliance with accounting standards and legislation for clients.
Business Process Outsourcing
Grant Thornton’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team serves the needs of rapidly growing mid-tier multinationals operating out of Ireland and other hubs through the provision of services across the full range of finance functions.
Flexible People Solutions
At Grant Thornton, our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) department have a dedicated team that help finance functions maximise efficiency.
Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions
Our Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions service offering covers a full suite of compliance services including financial statement preparation and related filings, dual bookkeeping, direct and indirect tax, statistical returns and payroll.
Global Payroll Solutions
At Grant Thornton, we meet the challenges of our clients. Our Global payroll compliance service offering is tailored to meet all your payroll requirements through a single point of contact.

Financial Services

Grant Thornton’s offering to the financial services industry is unique in that our team brings a wide range of experience with backgrounds in banking,...

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Actuarial
Our Actuarial team provides a comprehensive range of services to our insurance clients. From regulatory support for compliance to delivering specialist expertise in insurance & reinsurance.
Data Analytics
Our team helps to unlock the potential of data analytics within your organisation, allowing you to be more innovative, efficient and customer-centric than ever before.
Digital and Fintech
Our FinTech team are experts in technology and financial services and have a long track record of helping companies achieve sustained advantage.
Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
Financial Services Audit
Our Financial Services Audit team offers expertise and knowledge along with a horizontal approach to solving clients’ problems and queries.
Financial Services Consulting
We work closely with clients to understand their strategy and benchmark their performance against the very best international standards.
Financial Services Tax
Grant Thornton Ireland has a team of over 100 tax professionals providing advice to a diverse range of clients in the Financial Services sector.
FS Business Risk Services
Our FS Business Risk team have real experience of the financial services sector, through working within regulatory bodies or holding leadership positions in Risk, Compliance and Internal Audit functions.
Grant Thornton Pensioneer Trustees Limited
The Grant Thornton Pensioneer Trustee service can offer business owners, directors and employees the opportunity to manage their own retirement choices with full transparency.
Pension Audit
The Grant Thornton Pension Audit team has vast experience in managing schemes and preparing annual reports on them for clients.
Prudential Risk
Our industry leading Prudential Risk team works with clients on a range of areas including regulatory reporting, regulatory authorisations, on-site investigations and data quality assurance.
Quantitative Risk
Our Quantitative Risk team members bring a wide range of experience with many of them having backgrounds in banking, investment markets, regulation, professional practice, and academia.
Sustainability desk
We recognise that businesses are operating at different levels of maturity when it comes to sustainability, and pride ourselves on working with our clients to develop bespoke solutions to their needs.
Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS)
Our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) team designs and implements creative solutions for organisations expanding into new markets or undertaking functional financial transformations.

Private Client Services

Grant Thornton’s Private Client Services team can advise you on all areas of financial, pension, investment, succession and inheritance planning. We understand...

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Grant Thornton Financial Counselling
Grant Thornton Financial Counselling (GTFC) comprises a team of highly qualified professionals who offer financial advice to individuals and corporates across a range of areas including savings, investments, pension planning, and inheritance and succession planning.
Inheritance Planning
Our services on Inheritance Planning mirror those on Succession Planning whereby the foundations of the plan are derived from meaningful conversations with those that wish to pass on or protect their asset base.
Personal Tax Compliance & Planning
The Grant Thornton Personal Tax team helps clients remain compliant and up to date with all of their tax obligations whilst ensuring that they are solutions driven and manage their finances in the most tax efficient way possible.
Succession Planning
We have extensive experience guiding our clients successfully through the succession process. This involves advice on both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the process. While there is a business at the core of each succession plan we advise on, it is all predicated on understanding the people and their respective wishes.

Tax and Legal

Grant Thornton Ireland has a team of over 100 tax professionals providing advice to a diverse range of clients, including sole traders, small and medium sized...

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Company Secretarial
Grant Thornton’s Company Secretarial team contains qualified Company Secretaries. Clients are assured that they will meet all of their obligations under the Companies Acts and other relevant legislation and regulations.
Corporation Tax
Our Corporation Tax team is made up of more than 40 highly experienced senior partners and directors who work directly with a wide range of domestic, international, and financial services clients. We place a strong emphasis on direct service to clients and we pride ourselves on the close personal relationships we build and the deep understanding of their businesses we develop
Employer Solutions
Attracting and retaining key talent, managing employment costs and ensuring compliance with complex tax rules presents one of the most serious challenges today for many businesses. You need to ensure that your business complies with increasingly complex tax legislation and can adapt to updated Revenue guidance in a cost-effective way and we are here to help.
Financial Services Tax
The Grant Thornton team is made up of experts who are fully up to date in terms of changing and evolving tax legislation. This is combined with industry expertise and an in-depth knowledge of the evolving financial services regulatory landscape.
Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
International Tax
We develop close relationships with clients in order to gain a deep understanding of their businesses to ensure they make the right operational decisions. The wrong decision on how a company sells into a new market or establishes a new subsidiary can have major tax implications.
Tax Advisory
The Grant Thornton Tax Advisory team blends commercial experience and knowledge with tax expertise to advise clients on the full range of transactions including sales, mergers, restructurings and succession planning.
Tax Incentives
Our Tax Incentives team help clients access vital cash funding and tax incentives to enable them to achieve their growth ambition.
Transfer Pricing
Our Transfer Pricing team has extensive experience across all industries. They can assist clients in overcoming challenges and deliver sector specific, sustainable solutions.
VAT
Grant Thornton’s team of indirect tax specialists helps a range of clients across a variety of sectors including pharmaceuticals, financial services, construction and property and food to navigate these complexities.
Real Estate Tax Advisory
The Irish real estate market has experienced considerable change in recent years. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of challenges for investors, but has also brought about significant opportunities. With this in mind, taxation is now more than ever one of the key factors for real estate investors when appraising investments, financing methods and development structuring.

U.S. Irish Business Group

U.S. companies in Ireland form a critical part of Ireland’s cutting edge, internationally traded goods and services economy in industries such as information...

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About us

Grant Thornton Ireland has approximately 3,000 people, in 9 offices across Ireland, Isle of Man, Gibraltar and Bermuda, and a presence in over 140 countries...

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Alumni

We believe in a connected world — so we created an industry-leading online Alumni Network that focuses on what matters most at Grant Thornton — our people.

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Events

Browse our schedule of upcoming live events or webinars for the latest thinking from Grant Thornton's subject matter experts.

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News centre

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Subscriptions

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Experience

Orla is a Director in Grant Thornton’s Financial Services Advisory Practice having joined GT in 2018. Previous to joining Grant Thornton Orla gained 15+ years experience in financial services and held a senior management position with JPMorgan Bank Ireland as head of financial reporting and audit for JP Morgan's hedge fund administration business in Ireland.

Before joining Grant Thornton Orla also trained as an executive coach, trainer and facilitator and now works across projects within financial services advisory in sustainability reporting, financial reporting and fund administration/fund service operations. Orla also completed a secondment in the Central Bank Supervisory Risk Division around fund supervision models and frameworks in 2021. Currently Orla is seconded to EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group) as PMO and governance lead within the central secretariat on the development of sector specific sustainability reporting standards or ESRS (under CSRD). Orla is also a qualified Certified Fund Director (CIFD).

Sector experience

Orla’s experience is mainly in the asset management and financial services sectors across multiple service lines in addition to regulatory reporting and more recently sustainability reporting.

Her experience includes:

Sustainability Reporting and regulatory requirements across sector agnostic and sector specific reporting requirements (ESRS);
Financial Reporting, Fund Accounting & Fund Service Operations (Hedge, Mutual, UCITS, Non-UCITS, AIF, Irish, Cayman, US, Lux domiciles, all fund structures);
Regulatory, risk reporting and compliance;
Stakeholder management & people management / strategies.

Qualifications

B.A. in Business and Economics (TCD)
Chartered Certified Accountant (FCCA)
Diploma in Coaching Practice and Ethics (QQI) & Diploma in Train the Trainer (QQI)
Certified in delivery of individual and team assessments (Emotional Intelligence, Risk and Decision Making and workplace behaviours), BPS A& B
Certified Investment Fund Director Programme (IOB and CIFD Institute (2020)
Chair ACCA Business Leader Panel (2022 to date)
Member of 100WF

Latest Articles

Sustainability EU Commission Opens Public Consultation on “Set 1” of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRSs)

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (“EFRAG”) submitted to the European Commission its technical advice on the first set (“set 1”) of draft European Sustainability Reporting Standards (“ESRSs”) on the 22 November 2022. This included 2 “cross cutting” ESRSs (General Requirements and General Disclosures) and 10 “topical” standards across Environmental, Social and Governance topics.

| 2 min read | 13 Jun 2023

Financial Services Advisory The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive or “CSRD”

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”) introduces detailed reporting requirements on companies’ impact on the environment, human rights and social standards.

| 3 min read | 20 Mar 2023

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Director – Sustainability Reporting & CSRD Lead, Financial Services Advisory

Orla Carolan

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