IRELAND: Central Bank publishes Industry Letter on Investment Firms Market Abuse Review

Tuesday January 28 2014

The Central Bank of Ireland has published a review of Market Abuse Suspicious Transaction reporting during 2013 following themed reviews of the systems, policies and procedures established by certain investment firms during the year. The primary objectives of this review were to assess the adequacy of firms’ existing policy and procedures in relation to the identification and reporting of suspicious transactions and to increase the general level of awareness among all firms of the importance of suspicious transaction reporting to the goal of protecting market integrity.

Amongst other things, the Central Bank observed the following:

Compliance Departments of firms are generally familiar with market abuse legislation and most firms have written policies, procedures and training programmes to achieve compliance. In some firms, training and practical application of policies could be improved;There is an inconsistency between the level of awareness among firms and their staff of market abuse legislation and the low number of Suspicious Transaction Reports submitted to the CB. This reflected a correspondingly low number of referrals from front-line staff to their compliance departments. There is also an absence in most firms of records of “near misses”.

The Central Bank also issued a number of recommendations as to how firms can improve compliance in this area.

Click on the above link for more details.