Relationship with the Central Bank

An investment firm should participate in such meetings as the Central Bank considers necessary to review its operations and its business developments. An investment firm should, for the purposes of such meetings, supply any additional material as may be specified by the Central Bank, including internal auditors’ reports, operating procedures and management letters issued by the investment firm’s auditors. In addition, the Central Bank may conduct inspections of the operations of an investment firm if these are deemed necessary or appropriate.

An investment firm should respond to correspondence and to any requests for information from the Central Bank in a timely and thorough manner and within any period of time that may be specified by the Central Bank.

The Central Bank may request information on investment funds not authorised by the Central Bank in its role as supervisor of Irish service providers. Such requests do not imply any regulatory or supervisory role for the Central Bank in respect of such investment funds.

Records

An investment business firm shall ensure that its records contain as a minimum any record referred to in the Central Bank Investment Firms Regulations. In particular:

• Risk management

  Records should include details of exposure limits for trading positions and counterparty credit limits which are appropriate to the type, nature and volume of business undertaken in such a way that they are capable of being summarised to enable actual exposure to be measured readily and regularly against these limits. In some cases, this monitoring process will need to be carried out on a continuous basis while in other cases it may be sufficient for this to be done monthly.

• Investment management agreements

  An investment business firm shall maintain a copy of each investment management agreement entered into a client for at least six years after the date of the last transaction entered into, under the terms of that agreement, on behalf of that client.

• Records provided by third parties

  While an investment business firm may accept and rely on records supplied by a third party it is still required to maintain its own records against which such third party documentation may be verified.

• Client request for records

  Where a client asks to see any record of his/her dealing or of his/her account with the investment business firm, which the firm is required to keep under Regulation 12 of the Central Bank Investment Firms Regulations, the firm shall promptly provide the client with a copy of such records, which has been certified by the firm as being a true and complete copy of the client's records.

Issued: 13 March 2017
Latest revision: 13 March 2017