Irish Central Bank & Regulator bans former RSA Ireland Executive Director & CFO for 8 years with €70,000 fine

Peter Oakes, Enforcement Expert & Lawyer

Here's an enforcement action which will serve as a useful typology for fitness and probity, not to mention culture and behavior, as Ireland heads towards a Senior Executive Accountability Regime by Peter Oakes  

Peter is was appointed the first Director of Enforcement and Ant-Money Laundering at the newly reconstituted Central Bank of Ireland in 2010, where he led and developed the creation and staffing of the new Enforcement and Anti-Money Laundering Directorate with responsibility for delivering administrative sanction procedure enforcement actions, unauthorised providers actions, fitness and probity supervisory and enforcement actions and development of new regulatory laws.  Peter has worked on a number of regulatory enforcement matters since leaving the Central Bank and is available to advise and represent on such matters.  Read more here

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Bullet Point Summary

• This enforcement action is the 136th enforcement settlement since 2006 under the administrative sanctions procedure, bringing total fines imposed to over €103 million.
• Relates to a previous enforcement action against RSA Ireland Insurance DAC (RSAII), an insurance undertaking authorised and regulated by the Central Bank where Rory O’Connor was an Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer from 2010 to 2013.
• RSAII was fined in December 2018 €3,500,000 for what is termed a 'prescribed contravention', in that case serious breaches of financial services law (admitted by RSAII), including but not limited to the failure to establish and maintain technical reserves in accordance with Article 13(1)(a) of the European Communities (Non-Life Insurance) Framework Regulations 1994, S.I. No. 359 of 1994.  Technical reserves are the amount set aside by an insurance company to cover its liability for claims.
• Mr O'Connor's "misconduct merited a disqualification period of 12 years and a monetary penalty of €100,000"; however following a settlement discount, the sanction was reduced to 8 years 4 months and €70,000 respectively.

• The action against Mr O’Connor arose, as admitted, by his participation in the prescribed contravention in RSAII’s breach of Article 13(1)(a) of the 1994 Regulations, which requires an insurance undertaking to maintain sufficient levels of Technical Reserves (the Prescribed Contravention). 
• ​The Central Bank’s investigation found that Mr O’Connor participated in the prescribed contravention through his involvement in the deliberate manipulation of large loss claim reserve estimates, referred to in the enforcement action against RSAII as the “Under-Reserving Process”. 
• Unrelated to this matter, the Irish government announced in its programme for work release on 15 June 2020, the Irish government announced it will "introduce the Senior Executive Accountability Regime to deliver heightened accountability within the banking system".  (see page 25 of the Programme for Government Our Shared Future. 
• The comments from the Central Bank signal that behaviour and culture, not just conduct risk, prudential risk and fitness and probity are squarely on the Central Bank's agenda where it comes to supervisory and enforcement actions.​

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