Financial Regulator, official change name to Central Bank of Ireland

In recent correspondence the Financial Regulator wrote explaining that they have merged with the Central Bank, so in future, instead of ‘XYZ Ltd. t/a FirmName is regulated by the Financial Regulator’ companies will instead have to replace ‘Financial Regulator’ with ‘Central Bank of Ireland’. So the re-brand is now complete and the error of split regulation has now been undone.

With current advertisements and promotions you can continue as is but with future print runs or information the new information must apply.

Brokers will also have to provide an email address to the Central Bank for all regulation correspondence, as well as keeping a proper file of CPD (Continuous Professional Development) hours.

A register by firms of who is acting on their behalf must be available at all times and kept up to date, and MCR (Minimum Competency Requirements) must also be kept proving that experience is relevant to a present role.

Oversight of prudential supervision and compliance has now been moved to the Consumer Protection Codes Department within the Central Bank of Ireland.

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Regulation failure: Independent brokers unable to be ‘independent’

We were thinking of changing the way that brokers operate, by saying to our clients ‘our service comes at a price, we’ll advise you on any lender in the market and be totally independent, if we place your loan with one that pays commission you can set that against your fee, and if not then pay the fee’, doing so in the belief that totally transparent and independent advice is a good thing, and something that everybody wants, the broker, the consumer and the Regulator.

Sadly this is not the case, instead the Regulator (soon due another name change to ‘Central Bank Financial Services Authority of Ireland’) is relying on the letter of the law in the Consumer Credit Act of 1995 to ensure that brokers can’t give best advice. This is an example of total regulatory failure.

The actual portion of the code is S. 116.1.b which states ‘A person shall not engage in the business of being a mortgage intermediary unless— ( a ) he is the holder of an authorisation (“a …

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The day I mis-sold an insurance policy

About five years ago I had a couple in with me who were buying a home, I was helping them to determine their insurance needs and I realised that they had literally no protection if either of them ever fell seriously ill – not via their job/employer schemes or individually. So I suggested that they consider some serious illness cover, it would have cost them about €20 a month but they were insistent that they only wanted what was ‘cheapest and nothing more’.

As an adviser, it isn’t my job to always accept what people say they want because often, with adequate probing and understanding they actually want something entirely different, a skewed but simple way of understanding what I mean is that when saving or investing the majority of people want ‘high growth and high security’ – when in fact, these two features are normally night and day, if there ever was an asset that could deliver high growth with deposit account style security then everybody would pile in and the market would adjust accordingly, therefore you need to …

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Who is really to blame for the crisis?

Today, buried on the inner page of the Independent Business section there was an article stating that an Oireachtas committee found that the responsibility for the financial crisis in Ireland was largely down to regulators and ratings agencies (the same agencies who down-graded Irish debt in 09′).

Sadly, it didn’t make massive headlines, nor will it… If you could get a picture of Sean Fitz, or some scandal element to tag on then it would be everywhere, but the humble work of one of the few independent studies done on the matter, lacking sex-appeal & scandal will be widely ignored by the public, meaning everybody will still only see ‘banks’ as the source of the problem rather than as the conduit, when in fact the source of the problem was the gatekeeper, the person with their hand on the tap of the conduit, who allowed credit to flow too quickly for too long.

I had coffee with a well known economist last April and we spoke about this matter, he felt that it was …

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The tax of Regulation

It is worth noting that the constant calls for ‘Regulation’ are partly flawed, on one hand we do need more regulation, such as regulation of our Government agencies who can’t control their spending, regulation and accountability of our regulator, and of course (most importantly), some regulation of central banks who’s ability to keep rates too low and aid in the creation of money is closely linked with every major boom/bust in the last 100 years.

However, further regulation on financial services companies, and in particular small financial companies is not going to achieve the very aim it sets out to do, namely that of protecting consumers. It would be far better to have an ombudsman and regulator with teeth than to look for more laws that can be broken without retribution [in this respect banks have broken strict rules with almost total impunity].

Financial services are also a zero VAT business, this means that while we pay 21.5% VAT for everything we receive, we cannot charge VAT to our clients, thus, all of our …

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Why a rate cut is now inevitable

The ECB generally maintain that they are there to control inflation, normally we interpret this as ensuring that prices don’t get out of hand, or shoot up too quickly and indeed that is generally what rate changes are for, rates are raised to control price inflation. However, when the inverse happens (deflation or rapidly falling inflation) they will cut rates to stimulate the economy.

Today the treasury briefings put the flash estimate of inflation as being 1.6% while estimates were that it would be 1.8% which means that we are witnessing less inflation than expected and at a pace much faster than expected, if the ECB want to maintain inflation at ‘near but just below’ 2% then they have to reverse this trend and fast so there is strong likelihood that we will see a rate cut this week in order to achieve this (or at least work towards it!).

The Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) being pursued in the USA may come to our shores, the UK is already contemplating …

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