Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 December 2016
140. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance the number of expressions of interest, new applications for licences and applications for the extension of permissions the Central Bank has received from banks, insurers and asset managers since 24 June 2016. [38135/16]
View answerThe Central Bank has seen a significant number of enquiries that are Brexit related since the June referendum across all sectors including banking, insurance, investment firms, funds and fund service providers, payments and fintech.
The vast majority of enquiries have been exploratory in nature, however recently they are seeing a number of these enquiries beginning to advance further with enquirers starting to firm up their intentions, including possible plans to seek an authorisation.
It is difficult at this stage for the Bank to predict what this might mean in terms of actual numbers of submitted applications generally. Firms making enquiries can be thought of in three broad categories: new entrants seeking first time authorisations; currently authorised firms seeking to expand existing operations in Ireland; and firms seeking to reverse plans to wind down operations in Ireland as a result of the Brexit vote.
As part of its authorisation mandate, the Central Bank is committed to providing a clear, consistent, open and transparent authorisation process, while ensuring a rigorous assessment of the applicable regulatory standards. To ensure transparent and predictable authorisation timelines for high-volume processes, the Bank publishes on a semi-annual basis its Regulatory Service Standards Performance Report. These reports, which are available on its website, provide real transparency around the authorisation process for firms including measurement against standards to which the Bank is committed in terms of application processing across each of the sectors that it regulates.
