Temp Insure Cover - Central Bank of Ireland Issues Warning on Unauthorised Firm

The firm is not authorised to provide insurance intermediary or distribution services in Ireland. For compliance teams, this is a timely reminder that impersonation and clone scams remain a persistent threat to consumer trust and market integrity. The CBI’s action highlights the need for authorised firms to monitor for misuse of their brand, website, contact details, and regulatory status.

Insurance intermediaries and brokers should verify that their public-facing information is accurate and promptly report suspicious activity to the Central Bank. Consumer-facing teams should be prepared to handle customer queries about unsolicited insurance offers and direct them to the CBI’s register and financial scams guidance. Although this warning does not introduce new rules, it underscores existing obligations around fitness and probity, consumer protection, and financial crime controls.

Firms should consider adding enhanced due diligence checks for third-party leads, reviewing website domain monitoring, and issuing internal alerts to front-line staff. The CBI encourages reporting of unauthorised firms directly, reinforcing the importance of proactive engagement with the regulator. No specific compliance deadline is attached, but the operational risk is immediate: reputational damage, customer confusion, and potential liability can arise if cloned entities are mistaken for authorised firms.

Compliance leaders should treat this as a prompt to test impersonation response plans, update scam awareness training, and ensure customers know how to verify authorisation. The warning is informational in regulatory terms but carries moderate to high urgency for insurance distribution and consumer protection functions. Actionable next steps include checking for unauthorised use of firm details, monitoring for clone websites, and communicating verified contact channels to clients.