Authorisation of Financial Services Firms
Matheson’s Financial Institutions Group are market-leading experts in the authorisation of financial services firms in Ireland and can help ensure your proposal to set up in Ireland moves from being a plan on paper to a real-life operating business in the shortest time possible.
We are expert at advising clients on the Central Bank of Ireland’s authorisation processes and have successfully guided over 50 firms through the process of becoming authorised to provide cross-border financial services from Ireland across the EU.
Our broad range of experience in helping clients get authorised means we can provide you with practical advice on:
- How long the process can take for your relevant licence.
- How many employees you are likely to need in Ireland to get licensed.
- The extent to which you can credibly outsource operations elsewhere.
- The key areas of concern for the Central Bank of Ireland that will arise when considering an application.
Our multi-disciplinary practice structure within the Financial Institutions Group will ensure you receive market leading financial regulatory advice from a team of experts who have been through the licensing process multiple times and so have unparalleled insight in terms of local regulatory expectations and market trends so that you know exactly what is required to get established in Ireland from the start.
In addition we perform a client relationship role for many of the firm’s international clients by coordinating the provision of all of their Irish legal needs with other parts of the firm, such as employment, tax, privacy and real estate advice, which inevitably arise during the establishment process.
At Matheson we believe that your professional advisers should give you a commercial advantage in getting established in Ireland. We have worked extensively over many years with a broad range of financial institutions, both domestic and global, including banks, insurers, investment managers, payment institutions and e-money institutions on their licensing projects. We continually look to use the breadth and depth of our experience to benefit our clients. In our view, dedicated teams with extensive industry sector knowledge offer the best value for clients.
Experience Highlights
- In the insurance sector we have helped a significant number of UK-based insurance distributors and undertakings get authorised in Ireland under the Insurance Distribution Directive and Solvency II so that they can continue to service the European market after Brexit.
- We have advised a large number of leading investment firm and market infrastructure firms on their Irish MiFID II authorisations. The firms we have helped get authorised range from retail client focussed broker-dealers to algorithmic trading firms, prop traders and multilateral trading facilities. This means we have detailed knowledge of all aspects of the MiFID II regulatory framework and can comfortably handle any authorisation project no matter what MiFID permissions the business model involves.
- We have has been instructed by some of Europe’s biggest players in the Fintech and Payments sector over the past 4 years. Ireland now has 14 authorised e-money institutions and we have worked on over half of those Irish authorisations to date – more than any other Irish advisory firm in this space. We have advised clients who operate e-money accounts, money remittance and merchant acquiring business models to name but a few. Several of these clients are Irish regulated subsidiaries of some of the largest tech firms in the world.
- We have advised some of Europe’s leading credit institutions establish Irish branches under CRD IV, and advised them on applicable Irish conduct of business rules that apply in the Irish market. We have also advised on the only third country branch authorisation project to take place in the Irish market in the last five years.
- We also have extensive experience in advising clients on the domestic Irish law authorisation process for fund administrators, retail credit firms and credit servicing firms.
