The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (Ifsra) is examining information provided by up to 195 firms active in the reinsurance market after it asked them to verify that there were no "issues" with contracts they had written for a form of reinsurance under scrutiny in a number of international investigations.
Ifsra's official spokesman said it would raise with individual companies any concerns that it had about the information they had made available to it.
"We're satisfied with the level of response we've got," he said, describing the exercise as a "fact-finding process". The spokesman said Ifsra was working its way through the information provided by the firms, who were asked to write back to it "in relation to any issues that emerge".
He said the information provided by the companies would be used by Ifsra when it formulated a policy to regulate the reinsurance sector in the light of a new EU directive under discussion in the European parliament.
Many of the world's leading reinsurers have flocked to the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in the past 15 years, attracted by the low-tax regime. With annual premiums of €13 billion, the IFSC is now the fourth-biggest reinsurance centre in the world.
Apart from "fitness to practise" provisions governing directorships in such groups, the sector is unregulated.
With the activities of one Dublin reinsurer - Cologne Re - the subject of high-profile regulatory attention in the US and Australia, several other firms active in the Dublin market are said to have initiated audits to ensure that all their current and past contracts are in order.
According to people informed about the audits under way, the purpose of such reviews is to ensure that "no surprises" emerge as international regulators deepen their scrutiny of contracts for "finite-risk" reinsurance.
Finite-risk deals are typically designed to soften the impact of insurance claims that may have to be paid over a long period. At issue in a number of investigations is whether the risk element in the deals was improperly negated, meaning that the transactions should have been treated as loans between the parties.
Cologne Re is a subsidiary of General Re, a global reinsurer controlled by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. An Australian inspector is examining a General Re contract in 2000 with the Swiss insurance giant Zurich Financial, which has been linked to the Dublin office.
The IFSC operation also featured in an inquiry into the 2001 collapse of Australia's second-biggest insurer, HIH, and a US investigation into a General Re contract booked in Dublin with the world's biggest insurer, AIG.
That scrutiny, led by New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has already led AIG to restate its books on two occasions in recent weeks. As a direct result of these inquiries, AIG has also ousted its long-time chief executive, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.
