Central Bank of Ireland publishes settlement agreements with two investment firms

9 Dec 2015 News Categories

The Central Bank of Ireland has today published settlement agreements with the following firms:

Commenting on the settlements, Director of Enforcement Derville Rowland said: “The Enforcement Division today publishes statements about two separate settlements with smaller investment firms that show how firms can fall below the standards we expect. These breaches occurred because the firms did not ensure that they fully understood their regulatory obligations. Nor did they recall their own previous regulatory history where identical issues had arisen.

“The Central Bank expects regulated financial service providers to be sufficiently well controlled to deal with their regulatory environment and their supervisors in an informed and compliant way. This includes providing accurate and complete information to us.

“On 1 December 2015 Lambay Capital Limited trading as MKW Futures agreed to pay a financial penalty of €49,000 for breaches of the CRR and MiFID Regulations. The public statement is here. On 8 December 2015 the Central Bank agreed a financial penalty of €105,000 with Octagon Online Services Limited for a breach of MiFID Regulations. The public statement is here.

“While the facts and breaches in these two cases are different they share a common feature: each firm forgot, on an institutional level, its historic regulatory failings and prior dealings with the Central Bank. Firms must preserve their institutional memory, irrespective of size and the passage of time. They should record and preserve their regulatory contacts and ensure that, when engaging with the Central Bank, their employees can access and marshal all necessary information.

“Failure to record and track key information can result in staff making incomplete, inaccurate, misleading or even false statements to the Central Bank. Today’s public statements show that Enforcement will sanction firms for such failures.”