Every so often, the Irish financial regulator gauges the efficiency with which it authorises investment funds and financial service providers and processes 'fitness and probity' questionnaires.

There are 45 service standards in total. During the last six months the regulator says that it satisfied 27 of the 29 standards that applied for that period.

When processing applications for Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities (or UCITS) management companies (or mancos), the regulator tries to process 90% of authorisations within six months; in fact it processed all of them. It did the same - more than satisfying the same targets - when it processed alternative investment fund (AIF) manco applications and when it processed externally managed AIFM applications.

Of the 13 submissions for self-managed investment companies, the regulator only processed 85% - a black mark (or, according to the colour scheme of the report, a red mark) against the central bank because this function also had a 90% target attached to it. It did even worse when assessing applications for the clearance of non-EU-authorised investment managers, achieving 84% of 205 applications - 6% short of the mark.

The regulator was on its best behaviour with the European Union's second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, processing 100% of MiFID Level 2 applications (made by large firms or firms with complex investment strategies) and satisfying targets of 90% of initial submissions assessed within 40 business days, 90% of responses to first comments assessed within 10 business days, 90% of responses to second comments assessed within 20 business days and 90% of final submissions assessed within 10 business days.

It also processed 99% of 1,871 debt prospecti, 100% of 7 closed-end fund prospecti and 98% of 42 equity prospecti on time.

Interestingly, during the first half of this year the Central Bank of Ireland had no MiFID 'level 1' applications (small firms with simple - amusingly, the regulator calls them 'non-complex' - investment strategies) to process. It also did not have any applications for internally managed AIFs, fund administrator applications or fund depository applications to process.