Wholesale Market Conduct Risk - ‘Dear CEO’ Letter

Securities Markets Regulation

Date: 29 March 2019

Wholesale Market Conduct 

The Central Bank of Ireland is the competent authority in Ireland for wholesale market conduct supervision under a range of legislation. Wholesale financial markets regulation encompasses complex interconnected markets, a wide range of financial products and a large and varied group of professional market participants.

The Wholesale Market Conduct Team 

 Due to the increase in scale and sophistication of wholesale financial market activity conducted in and from Ireland and by branches of Irish firms in other jurisdictions, the Central Bank of Ireland has enhanced its approach to supervision of this sector. This includes developing systematic capabilities to supervise conduct in wholesale markets. 

In 2018, the Central Bank established a specialised Wholesale Market Conduct Team. The team is tasked with carrying out market conduct risk assessments of financial service providers engaging, or applying to engage, in wholesale market activity.

Industry Communication 

The Central Bank of Ireland has written to existing and incoming financial service providers to set out its expectations in respect of how these financial service providers identify, mitigate and manage market conduct risk. A copy of this letter, which applies to all financial service providers engaging in wholesale market activity, can be found here.