On the Central Bank’s register run of 1 September 2026 there are 114 authorised non-life undertakings: 85 Solvency II undertakings with head offices in Ireland, 25 branches of undertakings authorised elsewhere in the EU, and 4 with head offices outside the Union. That is a large number for a country of this size, and the reason is that Ireland is a domicile as well as a market — a substantial share of those undertakings write most of their business somewhere else.
We are one of them, in the sense that most of the risk we carry is located in the United Kingdom rather than in Ireland. What we are not is a composite: the register shows two classes of business against our name, and our Solvency II reporting has a single line of business, credit and suretyship.
A specialist in a market this crowded competes on two things, and neither is price. The first is whether the wording will be accepted by the beneficiary without three rounds of amendment, which is a function of having written the same instruments for years. The second is whether a decision arrives when it is needed. A contractor waiting on a bond the week before site access does not care about anyone’s appetite statement.
The corollary is knowing what to decline. An undertaking with two classes of authorisation and one reported line of business cannot be a general market, and pretending otherwise wastes a broker’s time. The register is a useful reminder of that: it is a list of who is allowed to write what, and ours is a short line on it.
Written by the underwriting team at FDI Insurance d.a.c., Dublin. This piece is general information, not advice on any particular transaction — and it is not an offer of insurance.
