Central Bank of Ireland publishes guidance

The new ASP Sanctions Guidance (the Guidance) is intended to:

• provide greater clarity on the Central Bank’s approach to enforcement sanctioning factors; and
• promote a better compliance culture by clarifying the behaviours which can either aggravate or mitigate a breach of financial services law.

The Guidance increases transparency by providing a steer to firms on how the Central Bank applies a variety of factors (such as cooperation, self-reporting and remediation) when deciding whether, and if so, to what extent, to sanction a firm under the ASP.

The Guidance also offers information on the types of behaviour which the Central Bank considers could aggravate or mitigate a breach of financial services law and highlights that a firm’s failure to co-operate with the regulator can have a considerable bearing on subsequent sanctions.

At the launch of the Guidance, the Central Bank:

• noted that, in the past thirteen years, it has imposed fines amounting to almost €100m in more than 130 settled cases under the ASP; and
• reminded firms that their cooperation is one of the Central Bank’s basic expectations when it comes to engagement with firms, whether in a supervisory or enforcement context.

In the words of the Central Bank’s Director General of Financial Conduct:

“Let me be very clear that while the Central Bank absolutely expects firms to prevent wrongdoing in the first place, they can undo some of those wrongs by demonstrating a positive culture in terms of how they deal with regulatory breaches. Or put another way, it is never too late to do the right thing.”