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Methodology

How the Insurance Intermediary Register works

Source

Every entity on this tracker comes from the Central Bank of Ireland's publicInsurance Distribution Register(register id 7) atregisters.centralbank.ie. The register covers firms authorised under the Insurance Distribution Regulations 2018 (S.I. 229 of 2018), which transposed Directive (EU) 2016/97 (Insurance Distribution Directive) into Irish law.

  • Insurance, Reinsurance and Ancillary Insurance Intermediaries (IDR) - CBI source

No EBA EUCLID backfill applies to this register; the Insurance Distribution Directive is not a PSD2 instrument. Authorisation dates are published by the Central Bank where available and are copied verbatim; we do not estimate or infer them.

Where a firm can be matched, we enrich its record with company-registration data from theCompanies Registration Office(company number, incorporation date). CRO enrichment is best-effort and never blocks publication: if the match is uncertain, we leave the field empty rather than guess.

How every fact is framed

Every figure and field on this tracker is prefaced as "as recorded in the Central Bank of Ireland Insurance Distribution Register on [retrieved date]". We surface the register; we do not give opinions about firms. A listing here is not an endorsement or assessment of a firm's suitability.

Removals are described exactly as the register records them: "removed from register". We never characterise a removal as "losing a licence", a "revocation", or any other editorial gloss, because a firm can leave a register for many legitimate reasons (voluntary surrender, restructuring, re-authorisation under another regime, merger).

GDPR - legal basis and data minimisation

The Insurance Distribution Register is a statutory public register maintained by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Insurance Distribution Regulations 2018. Publication of its contents in a searchable, linkable form is grounded in the following legal basis under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679:

  • Article 6(1)(e) GDPR - public task / legitimate interests of the controller: the register exists precisely to enable verification of intermediary authorisation status by consumers, insurers, and the public. Re-publishing it in a structured, citable form serves that same public interest.
  • Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA): the purpose (enabling consumers and businesses to verify broker authorisation status) is legitimate and proportionate. The data published here is restricted to what the Central Bank itself makes publicly available: entity name, reference number, status, authorised services, and (for incorporated entities) registered address. We do not publish contact details, personal email addresses, phone numbers, or any data beyond the register record.
  • Data minimisation for natural persons: the Insurance Distribution Register includes sole traders and individuals trading under their own name. For any entity whose name matches a natural-person pattern and cannot be matched to a CRO company record, the address field is suppressed at pipeline time - only the name, reference number, status, and services are published. When in doubt, the address is omitted. Bryan Collins reviewed the suppression heuristic and the resulting suppression list before this register was published.

For journalists

Every number on the tracker can be cited as "according to the Vendors.ie Irish Insurance Intermediary Register" with a link to the register hub or to an individual change event's permalink in the change feed. Counts are reproducible: the snapshots and the change ledger live in a public Git repository, so you can verify what we said on any given date.

Cadence

The pipeline runs weekly on Monday mornings. It downloads the register, normalises every row to one canonical schema, and diffs the result against the previous week's snapshot. Snapshots and the change ledger are committed to a public Git repository, so the full history is auditable.

Baseline established 22 July 2026. Last sync 17 August 2026.

What the diff detects

Comparing this week's snapshot to last week's produces four kinds of event:

  • New authorisation - an entity present this week that was absent last week.
  • Removed from register - an entity present last week that is absent this week.
  • Status changed - the same entity with a different status string.
  • Services changed - the same entity with a different set of authorised services.

Accuracy guardrails

  • No language model in the data path. Every figure and field is copied verbatim from the official register. A language model may help draft the wording of summary prose, but the data in every record is the data the register published.
  • Diff sanity check. If more than 15% of the register changes in one run, the pipeline halts and routes the candidate diff to a manual review queue. A swing that large almost always means the register's export format changed, not that reality did.
  • Removals are stated plainly. An entity that leaves the register is labelled "removed from register" - never editorialised as "lost licence" or "revoked" without the Central Bank's own wording.
  • Source and date on every row. Each entity links to its Central Bank register page and carries the date we retrieved it.

Correction and objection

If you believe a record here is wrong, the authoritative source is always the Central Bank of Ireland register itself - check the linked CBI page first. If our copy is out of step with the register,contact us and we will correct it on the next sync or sooner.

If you are an individual (sole trader or natural person) listed on this register and wish to object to the publication of your address, contact us with your CBI reference number. We will review your case within 10 working days. Note that the register itself is a statutory public record maintained by the Central Bank; our correction policy governs our copy only.

What this is not

Out of scope by design: the UK FCA register, opinion or analysis pages, entity contact details beyond the register record, any scraping of entity websites, and any ranking or editorial assessment of intermediaries. This is a record of the official Irish register, nothing more.