Briefing Memo

My aim today is to, through this briefing memo, provide you with a clarity of understanding of what your role here will entail, and an overall insight into the specificities of what is expected of your contribution. Your role on the Board of Directors will centre around aiding toward the reversal of the adverse impact that the lack of compliance with regulation, best practice and Corporate Governance within Systematically Important Financial Institutions in recent years has had on our economy. This impact was catalysed be a massive failure of financial sector decision making that ultimately resulted in the global financial crisis, a catalyst that needs to and will be eliminated and you will be a factor in ensuring this. Given your background

The perpetual evolution of today’s marketplace and its global nature has compelled expansion of our scope as a banking organisation and the complexity of our activities, resulting in an ever changing and increasingly complex regulatory environment that you will be exposed to. Our focus is on further generation of our regulatory compliance structure in order to ensure transparency between ourselves and our customers despite the complexity of our situation, and through this generation, stay abreast of changing regulatory requirements, expectations and industry practices. Moreover, the adverse impacts of the recent banking crisis along with several high profile compliance breakdowns within the industry, combined with a heightened focus on consumer protection have led to a major increase in awareness surrounding regulatory compliance performance and whether financial institutions are implementing best practice on a broad scale.3 Regulation within the banking industry is inherent to the enabling of a belief in economic stability due to the interconnectedness of the banking industry and the dependence our economy holds on banks, and so it is crucial that we comply with regulation if we wish to develop a national belief in the ability of our economy to thrive moving

However, the implementation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) by the ECB resulted in the movement of a number of supervisory responsibilities and decision making powers to the ECB.4 The aim of the SSM is to generate high supervisory quality through absorption of the main lessons of the recent crisis by way of integrating traditional micro supervision at the hands of “national competent authorities” supervisors with a macro prudential dimension provided by ECB supervisors. These diverse teams will conduct the annual supervisory cycle and provide analysis and information to the Supervisory Board, which will in turn prepare decisions on individual banks. The SSM regulation places a lot of weight on the implementation of best practice in the areas of independence, transparency and accountability through intense scrutiny. The statutory goal of the SSM is defined as “… contributing to the safety and soundness of credit institutions and the stability of the financial system within the Union and each Member State, with full regard and duty of care for the unity and integrity of the internal market based on equal treatment of credit institutions…”.5 As a credit institution operating in Ireland considered ‘significant’ by the ECB due to our size with total assets of 50bn, we are subject to ECB supervision. However,