When Colm Kincaid, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ireland, took to the podium at the Irish Criminal Justice Agencies Conference in Dublin on 9 October 2026, the message he carried was one that regulators and law enforcement officials across Europe have been circling for years without fully grasping: the fight against economic crime cannot be won in silos. His remarks, subsequently published on the Bank for International Settlements speeches platform, placed the question of institutional collaboration squarely at the centre of Ireland's anti-financial crime agenda — and, by extension, at the heart of a broader European reckoning with how public and private actors coordinate against increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.
The Coordination Problem at the Core of Economic Crime
Economic crime — encompassing money laundering, fraud, corruption, and the financing of illicit activity — has long exploited one fundamental structural weakness in democratic systems: the fragmentation of the institutions charged with stopping it. Banks operate under financial regulatory mandates. Law enforcement agencies work within criminal justice frameworks. Intelligence services occupy a separate domain entirely. Each maintains its own data, its own priorities, and, critically, its own legal constraints on information sharing. The result is a patchwork of oversight that sophisticated criminal enterprises are adept at navigating.
Kincaid's address to the assembled Irish criminal justice stakeholders framed this fragmentation not as an intractable structural reality but as a correctable gap — one that deliberate, sustained collaboration between financial institutions, regulators, and law enforcement could meaningfully close. The conference itself, gathering representatives from across Ireland's criminal justice ecosystem, represented precisely the kind of cross-institutional forum that advocates of a more joined-up approach have argued is essential. That a senior central banking figure was delivering the keynote signals how seriously the regulatory establishment now views the public-private and inter-agency dimensions of the problem.
Why Ireland, Why Now
Ireland occupies a distinctive position in the European financial architecture. As a significant hub for international financial services — home to the European operations of numerous global banks, asset managers, and fintech firms — its anti-money laundering and counter-financial crime infrastructure carries weight well beyond its geographic size. Weaknesses in Irish financial oversight have the potential to reverberate across the European Union's single market. Equally, innovations in Irish regulatory practice can serve as templates for peer jurisdictions.
The timing of Kincaid's remarks is also significant. European anti-money laundering reform is at an advanced stage, with the EU's new European Banking Authority-led Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) set to assume supervisory responsibilities for the highest-risk cross-border financial institutions in the coming years. Ireland, as a major host jurisdiction for internationally active banks, will be subject to heightened scrutiny under this new regime. The impetus to demonstrate robust, collaborative anti-crime infrastructure is therefore not merely philosophical — it is strategically necessary.
The Public-Private Collaboration Imperative
Kincaid's central argument — that closing the gaps requires collaboration — speaks to a model of financial crime prevention that has gained significant traction in recent years. The traditional approach placed the compliance burden predominantly on financial institutions, requiring banks to file suspicious activity reports and conduct customer due diligence largely in isolation from the broader intelligence picture. That model has shown its limits. Criminal networks move faster than compliance departments operating without access to law enforcement intelligence, and law enforcement agencies working without real-time financial data are perpetually reactive.
The alternative, increasingly advocated by bodies including the Financial Action Task Force and piloted in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom through its Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce, involves structured information-sharing arrangements that allow financial institutions and public authorities to pool intelligence in legally permissible ways. Ireland's convening of a Criminal Justice Agencies Conference, with senior central banking participation, suggests an institutional appetite for moving in this direction — building the kind of trust, legal frameworks, and operational protocols that effective collaboration demands.
What This Means for Financial Institutions
For banks and other regulated financial entities operating in Ireland and across the European Union, Kincaid's remarks carry a clear directional signal. The regulatory expectation is shifting away from compliance as a purely internal, box-ticking exercise toward a more dynamic, intelligence-led model of financial crime prevention. Institutions that invest in the relationships, data infrastructure, and legal frameworks necessary to participate meaningfully in public-private collaboration will be better positioned — both operationally and reputationally — under the emerging supervisory regime.
The stakes are substantial. Economic crime imposes enormous costs on economies and communities, erodes public trust in financial institutions, and — in its most serious forms — funds criminal enterprises that cause direct harm to individuals and societies. Closing the gaps that Kincaid identified is not a bureaucratic aspiration. It is a practical necessity for a financial system that aims to serve legitimate economic activity while denying access to those who would corrupt it. The conference in Dublin was, in that sense, a small but meaningful step in the right direction — a gathering of the institutions that must, ultimately, work together if any of them are to succeed alone.
Written by the editorial team — independent journalism powered by Codego Press.