Coffee Break: What’s Brewing for Fund Administrators in Ireland in 2025?

By Emma Keane & Gunjan Bhutani

As we settle into 2025, the Central Bank of Ireland’s Investment Funds Supervision Bulletin 2024 offers valuable insights into the regulatory landscape for fund administrators. While the Bulletin reflects on last year’s trends and supervisory priorities, its themes signal the road ahead. For fund administrators, 2025 is likely to see heightened focus on governance, ESG integration, and operational resilience. The Central Bank’s emphasis on the effectiveness of fund management companies reminds administrators that their role in ensuring accurate, timely reporting and oversight is pivotal—not just a back-office function but a core pillar of investor confidence. ESG continues to dominate discourse, and fund administrators will play a crucial role in helping clients meet new and evolving sustainability disclosure requirements.

With the Bulletin highlighting supervisory scrutiny on greenwashing, robust data management and verification processes will be key priorities for administrators supporting asset managers. Operational resilience is another standout. Cyber risks and technology failures were flagged in 2024, and administrators must focus on strengthening frameworks for incident management and continuity planning. While the CBI has confirmed in their DORA FAQ’s that their current understanding is that fund administrators authorised solely under the Investment Intermediaries Act are not captured in the scope of DORA, they do encourage all out-of-scope firms to use DORA as a benchmark of effective practice.  Expect greater scrutiny from both regulators and clients in this space.

This is a timely reminder for fund administrators to be proactive in maintaining strong regulatory relationships and staying ahead of industry standards.

As well as the Bulletin, we look back to October 2024 when the Minister of Finance published the Funds Sector Review 2030. The industry engagement by government aimed to ensure that Ireland maintains its leading position in asset management and fund servicing by understanding the position from the industry itself. Aligning the commerciality of Ireland as a key jurisdiction for funds, with the regulators focus on ongoing resilience, data analytics and technology to identify emerging risks and trends, aims to future-proof the sector.  The recently announced Programme for Government 2025 aims to deliver on this strategy with key themes focussing on Regulatory Modernisation, Resilience and Stability, and Investment Attraction.

At HIGHVERN, the focus will always be on the quality of the service we provide to all stakeholders, whether it be the client directly, their investors or the regulator. Our well-informed team recognises the importance of the intermediary relationships that we value within our industry and the trust that is placed on us by them to deliver.

As we sip our coffee and plan for the year ahead, it’s clear that 2025 will require agility, foresight, and a commitment to excellence. The Investment Funds Supervision Bulletin 2024 and the Fund Sector Review 2030 provide a compass pointing the way forward for fund administrators.

 

 

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